It has been demonstrated that chitosan-hydroxyapatite composite induces osteoconductivity in osseous defects but also could act as drug vehicle. It is important be able to load these composites with short-time life and controlled action anti-inflammatories to reduce or eliminate undesirable inflammatory processes. The goal of the present study is to define the variation between surface properties that this composite experiments as consequence of several sterilization treatments, and application of several pharmaceutical products relating with physical properties. Morphological changes on surface, achieved by polarization and confocal microscopies, thermal and physical properties of chitosan composites and the NSAIDs release process kinetics so as the sterilization treatment effects observed by UV-vis spectroscopy were studied. In this article, it has been demonstrated that the kind of sterilization has no important influence in NSAIDs release in chitosan membranes or composites but differs a little with chitosan membranes no submitted to sterilization treatments. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.