Salt impregnation of implant materials.

Implant infection and peri-implantitis are recurrent and serious complications in implantology. Antibiotic treatment of infected implants in bone is complicated because of limited vascularization of the surrounding tissue on the one hand, and biofilm formation on the implant surface on the other. Therefore, contamination of the implant surface has to be prevented. For this purpose we developed a method of coating Ti6Al4V samples with NaCl in order to reduce the water activity on the sample surface. The resulting NaCl-coated surfaces showed good biocompatibility with osteoblastlike cells and resulted in a significant reduction of bacterial strains. The presented surface modification is hence a promising method to reduce bacterially induced implant failure.