Silk screws set to transform surgery

Screws made entirely from silk have been used to fix broken bones in research that could revolutionise surgery.

Medical engineers from the US have made screws from medical grade silk using especially designed moulds. When they tested the approach on rodents they found that the natural fibre eventually dissolved in the body.

“We envision a whole set of orthopaedic devices for repair based on this – from plates and screws to almost any kind of device you can think of where you don’t want hardware left in the body,” explains David Kaplan from Tufts University who was involved in the work. “They don’t interfere with X-rays, they don’t set off alarms and they don’t cause sensitivity to cold.”

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