The sinterability of nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite (HA) particles by microwave sintering was compared with conventional pressureless sintering. The results revealed that microwave heating was effective in producing a useful HA body in a very short sintering cycle without disrupting the HA phase stability. The maximum hardness of 7.21GPa and 6.38GPa was obtained for HA sintered at 1050°C by the conventional method and 1150°C by microwave sintering, respectively. The maximum fracture toughness measured for the microwave-sintered and conventional-sintered HA was 1.45MPam^1/2 at 1050°C and 1.22MPam^1/2 at 1000°C, respectively. Although the relative density of microwave-sintered HA was slightly lower than the conventional-sintered HA throughout the sintering regime employed, taking into account of the heating and soaking periods, the time taken by microwave sintering to achieve a relative density of 96.5% was about 3% of the time consumed for samples sintered by the conventional heating. Microwave heating was found to be an effective technique to produce a useful HA body for clinical applications without causing grain coarsening.