Is PEEK material for cranial repair good? Is it expensive?

Craniosynostosis is one of the most common and diverse human congenital anomalies, which seriously affects the physical and mental health and quality of life of patients, especially large cranial defects caused by trauma, tumor resection and vascular injury. Currently, the most common treatments used for cranial bone injuries are autologous bone and allogeneic bone grafting. However, autologous bone grafts often face the challenges of shape matching and limited sources, and allogeneic bone grafts are prone to immune rejection. Because of cranial bone repair surgery, many cranial bone repair materials have also “popped up”, and currently the widely used materials are titanium mesh and PEEK. Although titanium mesh has advantages, there are still many disadvantages. Titanium mesh manufacturers are relatively chaotic, and because of the high technical requirements of titanium alloy processing, so the quality of molding varies, especially for osteoporosis patients, often occurring poor fit. Secondly, titanium mesh is greatly affected by temperature. Moreover, due to the inherent lack of plasticity of titanium mesh, titanium mesh is difficult to be perfectly shaped for large curvature areas of the head, such as the forehead and the arch of the eyebrow, and there may be traces of the mesh after implantation, resulting in a poor visual effect. Compared with titanium mesh, PEEK material is much better. PEEK (polyether ether ketone) is a special engineering plastics, looks and ordinary plastics are almost the same, but there are high temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, strong, and at the same time good toughness, fatigue resistance and many other advantages. It is strong but good elasticity, weight and texture is very close to the human skeleton, even if the collision will not appear depression or deformation, PEEK cranial repair perfect to make up for the shortcomings of the titanium mesh. Then PEEK material is expensive, PEEK material is far better than titanium mesh because of repair, so PEEK is more expensive compared to titanium mesh.