The preceding chapter provided a general description of the structure and biology of bone and cartilage. We learned how bones grow, are sculpted by modeling and continuously renewed by remodeling, and repair themselves when fractured. All of these are important processes, but in this chapter we focus on remodeling, for two reasons. First, remodeling is the only one of these processes that occurs throughout one’s lifetime. Growth and modeling are essentially restricted to children, and fracture healing is restricted to even more isolated periods of time. Second, because bone remodeling occurs throughout life, it plays a dominant role in determining the structure of most of the tissues in the skeleton, most of the time. Consequently, remodeling is a primary determinant of the mechanical properties of bone, their resistance to fatigue failure, and their ability to function in a changing mechanical environment. Therefore, we need to develop our understanding of bone remodeling in some depth to pursue our study of skeletal tissue mechanics.
Keywords
- Bone Remodel
- Activation Frequency
- Bone Formation Rate
- Resorption Cavity
- Haversian Canal
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.