RÉSUMÉ
BACKGROUND:Polyvinyl alcohol is a biocompatible and biodegradable polymer. It is widely used in clinical areas because of its water-soluble, film forming, emulsification, adhesiveness, tasteless, and nontoxic. OBJECTIVE:To review the applications of polyvinyl alcohol and its composite materials in bone, cartilage, skin, vessels and other tissue engineering scaffolds. METHODS:A computer-based online search of CNKI database from January 2000 to December 2011, PubMed database and Elsevier (ScienceDirect) database from January 1980 to December 2012, was performed by the first author with key words of“poly(vinyl alcohol), composite material, tissue engineering scaffold”both in Chinese and English. Literatures concerning polyvinyl alcohol and its composite materials in bone, cartilage, skin, vessels and other tissue engineering scaffolds were included, and repetitive research was excluded. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Although there are not enough strength, complications and other shortcomings in vivo, due to its good biocompatibility and biodegradable properties, polyvinyl alcohol and its composite materials have made great progress in tissue engineering applications from the laboratory to the pre-clinical research. But its long-term effects need further research. It wil be a main research aim of scaffold materials in the future to improve the interaction of cel s with the scaffold materials by surface modification, to prepare biomimetic materials by cel microenvironment simulation, to improve the hydrophilicity, the adhesion of cel s, and cel differentiation and proliferation, to bionic the structure and function of the natural extracel ular matrix by building three-dimensional porous structure and control ing the release of cel growth factors, to meet the need of tissue regeneration by congruity or harmony of degradation and mechanical strength.