Biomaterials: A Tantalus Experience

JA Helsen and Y Missirlis eds., Springer (2010)
Reviewed by G Cama and M Capurro

Biomaterials A Tantalus Experience

JA Helsen and Y Missirlis eds.

Springer 

ISBN 9783642125324

 

This book deals with engineered natural and synthetic biomaterials and their properties as well as their functions. The authors declared that their choice was not to make a systematic analysis of biomaterials in all their different applications but rather to describe exemplary topics to introduce beginners into this wide and interdisciplinary scientific world.

The book is divided into 15 chapters which gradually bring the readers to understand why and how artificial materials can be replaced for damaged or hampered parts of the human “machine”. In this excursus various traditional and new materials are examined with applications to long bone grafts (chapter 6), dental repair (chapter 10), prostheses (chapter 11), heart valves (chapter 12 and 13), vascular grafts (chapter 13). Other chapters (2-5 and 14) are focused on particular materials (metals alloys, ceramics, polymers, composites and water) or material properties such as mechanical strength and stiffness and corrosion behaviour. Four appendices recall basic information of chemistry, crystallography and electrochemistry.

Our main criticism is that it is not clear enough which kind of readers are addressed. The book is neither a specialised issue, nor a textbook for beginners: in fact, its contents are trivial for a scholar and the lack of systematic approach to the discipline makes the text unsuitable for undergraduate courses.

The initial chapters may give a pleasant reading on some scientific phenomena having to do in some way or other with materials science as applied to biology and bioengineering. However, the following chapters are a magma of various subjects presented without an apparent order. The author themselves look like being conscious about that in the closing chapter of the book.

 

G Cama and M Capurro

November, 2013