The corrosion scenario in human body: Stainless steel 316L orthopaedic implants

As the world’s populations increase and age, there is a parallel increase in the number of medical procedures addressed to bone related injuries. It is estimated that approximately 1 million of orthopaedic implant surgeries in association with total joint replacements are needed every year. This number is expected to double between 1999 and 2025 as a result of increasing numbers of musculoskeletal injuries (i.e., due to routine activities such as work, sport, etc.) and musculoskeletal diseases (i.e., such as osteoporosis, arthritis and bursitis due to increase age). Consequently, the increase demand for better quality of life has necessarily led people to opt for high quality orthopaedic devices for early recovery and speedy resumption of their routine activities. Unfortunately in the present time, it has been found that the current used orthopaedic implants have the tendencies to fail after long period of usage, due to the corrosion issue of implant in the human body. Therefore, this paper provides a simple overview about the corrosion issue of stainless steel (SS) 316L as implants in human body. Electrophoretic deposition (EPD) of hydroxypaptite (HA) bioceramic was proposed as the approach to minimize the corrosion phenomena. Additionally, the corrosion testing of HA coated SS 316L in comparison to pristine SS 316L was also performed and discussed.