Preliminary evaluation of bone graft substitute produced by bone of duck beak

This paper studied the production and properties of bioceramics bone graft substitutes from duck beak bone, as a natural source. Duck beak bone particles were fabricated by de-fatting, followed by heat-treatment at 1000 C for 3 h in an air atmosphere. It was confirmed that heat-treated beak bone particles were highly porous in their structure, with a rough surface, and the Ca/P atomic ratio value was 1.65, similar to that of human bone. In addition, the heat-treatment process of beak bone particles resulted in single phase hydroxyapatite (HA) with high crystallinity. In vivo performance of beak bone particles using rat calvarial defects showed a significantly higher bone volume than that of bovine bone particles at 4 weeks post implantation. This study demonstrated that duck beak bones can be prepared as economical bone graft substitutes of natural, biological origin HA.