The human skeleton is made up of an individual or joint bones found in the skull, supported and supplemented by a network of ligaments, muscles, tendons, cartilages and other organs. The ligament is the short band of tough and fibrous connective tissue. It mainly comprises long and stringy collagen fibers. Ligaments make the connection from bone to bone and forming a joint. In some cases ligaments might limit the mobility of the articulations, thereby preventing sudden movements order.
A tendon, on the other hand, is made up of fibrous, strong connective tissue which connects muscle to a bone. Any strong damage to the tendon results in the inability to flex or extend at a joint. Cartilage is a kind of dense connective tissue and is composed of cells known as the chondrocytes, which are disposed of in a steady gal like ground substance, called the matrix. The cartilage has no blood vessels and gets the nutrients when the latter is diffused through the matrix. Cartilage is found in all the joints of the human body, the ear, the rib cage, the nose. It is also found in the throat as well as in between the intervertebral discs. There are different types of cartilages elastic, hyaline and fibrocartilage.
There are also many different types of bones. Almost everyone has the spongy as well as the compact part. The bone which has the spongy and the compact part has a bone marrow in the center of it. Compact bone is generally attributed to the outer covering of the bone, and the ends of the bone are usually spongy which are provided with red bone marrow. The bone marrow is supplied with an extensive network of blood vessels. There can be a yellow bone marrow or red bone marrow. Redbone marrow mostly contains the blood stem cells which are capable of developing into red blood cells, platelets or white blood cells. But the yellow bone marrow mostly contains fat. The cancer patients who receive radiation and other forms of chemotherapy are prone to damage their bone marrow or the stem cells.
Therefore after the completion of the chemotherapy or radiation session, the patient might be asked to go for a bone marrow transplant. In case his or her stem cells are severely damaged, replacing a damaged bone marrow with the healthy one might give rise to healthier cells, once the patient is medically fit after a successful treatment. Bone marrow transplant in India with extreme care and at a comparatively low cost than in the European countries. Apart from the spongy bones or the compact bones, there can be diploid bones, cartilage bones, sesamoid bones, investing or dermal or membranous bone and visceral bones too. Spongy bones are also known as the cancellous bone which has a bony matter as bar or trabeculae and space is filled with the red bone marrow.
Spongy bone bones might occur at the end of the long bones vertebrae ribs and sternum. The function of the long bones in mammals is to provide support and produce RBC and WBC since the long bones contain bone marrow from which the latter develops.