Raman study of the repair of surgical bone defects grafted with biphasic synthetic microgranular HA + β-calcium triphosphate and irradiated or not with λ780 nm laser

The treatment of bone loss due to different etiologic factors is difficult, and many techniques aim to improve repair, including a wide range of biomaterials and, recently, photobioengineering. This work aimed to assess, through Raman spectroscopy, the level of bone mineralization using the intensities of the Raman peaks of both inorganic (∼960, ∼1,070, and ∼1,077 cm−1) and organic (∼1,454 and ∼1,666 cm−1) contents of bone tissue. Forty rats were divided into four groups each subdivided into two subgroups according to the time of killing (15 and 30 days). Surgical bone defects were made on femur of each animal with a trephine drill. On animals of group Clot, the defect was filled only by blood clot; on group Laser, the defect filled with the clot was further irradiated. On animals of groups Biomaterial and Laser + Biomaterial, the defect was filled by biomaterial and the last one was further irradiated (λ780 nm, 70 mW, Φ ∼ 0.4 cm2, 20 J/cm2 session, 140 J/cm2 treatment) in four points around the defect at 48-h intervals and repeated for 2 weeks. At both 15th and 30th day following killing, samples were taken and analyzed by Raman spectroscopy. At the end of the experimental time, the intensities of both inorganic and organic contents were higher on group Laser + Biomaterial. It is concluded that the use of laser phototherapy associated to biomaterial was effective in improving bone healing on bone defects as a result of the increasing deposition of calcium hydroxyapatite measured by Raman spectroscopy.