Mechanical and Histological Characteristics of Human Tubular Bones after Hyperthermal Treatment

Abstract

This research focused on studying regularities in changes in strength characteristics and histological patterns of healthy tubular bone tissue depending on the temperature setting of hyperthermal treatment. Experimentation has established that heating the experimental bone sample in a temperature range of 60 to 70 °C does not cause any decline in strength characteristics compared to the control samples not subject to heat treatment. In compression tests (along the length of the bone), after heating the bone samples ex vivo to 80 °C, the strength characteristics were found to increase as the samples sustained a higher maximum stress. In bending tests, in contrast, the strength characteristics were reliably found to decrease in bone samples at 80 °C and 90 °C for the maximum stress indicator and 90 °C for the modulus of elasticity. Data obtained through histological examination further demonstrated statistically significant differences between the two temperature ranges of 60–70 °C and 80–90 °C, where semi-quantitative assessment revealed statistically significant differences in the markers of bone tissue destruction caused by hyperthermal treatment. Moderate (at 60–70 °C) and pronounced (at 80–90 °C) dystrophic and necrotic changes were observed both in the cells and the intercellular matrix of the tibia. From a practical point of view, the temperature range of 60–70 °C can be considered operational for thermal ablation since, at these temperatures, no statistically significant decline was observed for the strength characteristics in either the cross-section or length-section.