**3. The concept and potential applications of magnesium alloys in medicine (advantages and limitations)**

The progress of both the medicine and materials engineering results in an intensification of research works on new biomaterials. Nowadays, magnesium alloys are considered potential resorbable metallic biomaterials. Furthermore, it is assumed that a magnesium alloy as a resorbable biomaterial should gradually degrade in the human body until the bone fuses. Degradation products of a resorbable implant would be processed, absorbed or excreted from the patient's tissues and body fluids. The use of implants designed according to this concept does not require re-operation and it allows the foreign object (implant) to stay in the human body. Apart from good mechanical properties and biocompatibility, magnesium has a number of other advantages, such as [20, 21]:

