## 9 Conclusions  
Antibiotic-eluting scaffolds present many advantages over other local methods for the treatment of osteomyelitisitis. This is a dynamic field that has seen many exciting advances. Natural, synthetic and composite bone substitutes have all been developed, some of which have moved into clinical trials. Perhaps the most promising of these are the biodegradable, antibiotic-eluting composite scaffolds. These can be designed to incorporate the best features of all available biomaterials and can be 3D-printed, therefore allowing scalability and/or patient-specificity [93]. Composites have come at a time when the field of bone tissue engineering is moving away from the concept of an 'ideal' bone substitute, towards applications that depend on the clinical context [94; 95; 96]. There is still a need for large-scale randomised control trials in this area before definitive conclusions can be reached. It also remains to be fully explored how antibiotic-eluting composite scaffolds can be made to interact with other pathways involved in bone repair, namely growth factor signaling and cell-based therapies. Conceptualization, H.K. and W.S.K. ; Methodology, H.K. and A.K. ; Formal Analysis, H.K. ; Investigation, H.K. and A.K. ; Writing-Original Draft Preparation, H.K. ; Writing-Review & Editing, H.K., A.K., and W.S.K. ; Visualization, H.K. ; Supervision, W.S.K. ; Project Administration, W.S.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. This research received no external funding. The authors declare no conflict of interest. The authors declare no conflict of interest. References  
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