• Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.25-31
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• 2001

The titanium miniplate osteosynthesis system has been used for fixation of bone fragments in the maxillofacial areas due to easy manipulation and even has been proposed for unnecessity of miniplate removal because of the biocompatibility and the corrosion resistance. But recently, there have been some suggestions for its removal, on the basis of findings that there have been pigmentations around the adjacent tissues during miniplate removal procedure and they are the depositions of metal particles. Purposes of this study are to ascertain the presence and nature of pigmentation observed within tissues adjacent to titanium miniplate, and to suggest possible causes of it. We could observe the black pigmentation during miniplate removal procedure for recent about 1.5 year. Pigmented tissues were stained with hematoxylin-eosin(H-E) for light microscophic(LM) examination to investigate the black pigmentations and the histomorphology around them. The scanning electron microscopy(SEM) with energy dispersive X-ray(EDX) analysis was used to examine the ultrastructural nature of pigmentations. Many metal particles with variable sizes and shapes were seen in the connective tissue by SEM and were identified as titanium by EDX.