Bioactive Glasses for Soft and Hard Tissue Healing Applications—A Short Review

Abstract

Bioactive glasses have developed into a variety of items that are used in order to treat a wide range of medical problems. Apart from being mostly applied in the healing processes of hard tissues, bioactive glasses are becoming very popular materials in soft tissues healing. Bioactive glasses have exhibited the ability to accelerate skin regeneration by enhancing angiogenesis and collagen deposition in the proliferation stage, as well as positive effects on all the other important stages of wound healing. They can adhere to hard tissues such as bone and aid in the regeneration of those tissues by forming a calcium–phosphate-like layer on their surfaces. The formation of this apatite layer results in a linkage between the hard tissue and the glass, which further leads to bone healing. This short review summarizes the dynamic process of wound healing along with the basic concepts of bioactive glasses applied in this domain. We aimed to explore constructs which aid different phases of wound healing. Moreover, several research studies dedicated to bioactive glass thin films are briefly discussed.

Keywords

• bioactive glasses
• wound healing
• dissolution
• cellular activity
• dopants
• dressing