2 research outputs found
Experimental and numerical investigations of bone drilling for the indication of bone quality during orthopaedic surgery
Bone drilling is an essential part of many orthopaedic surgical procedures, including those for internal fixation and for attaching prosthetics. Drilling into bone is a fundamental skill that can be both very simple, such as drilling through long bones, or very difficult, such as drilling through the vertebral pedicles where incorrectly drilled holes can result in nerve damage, vascular damage or fractured pedicles. Also large forces experienced during bone drilling may promote crack formation and can result in drill overrun, causing considerable damage to surrounding tissues. Therefore, it is important to understand the effect of bone material quality on the bone drilling forces to select favourable drilling conditions, and improve orthopaedic procedures. [Continues.
Drilling resistance: a method to investigate bone quality
Purpose: Bone drilling is a major part of orthopaedic surgery performed during the internal fixation of fractured bones. At present,
information related to drilling force, drilling torque, rate of drill-bit penetration and drill-bit rotational speed is not available to orthopaedic
surgeons, clinicians and researchers as bone drilling is performed manually. Methods: This study demonstrates that bone drilling
force data if recorded in-vivo, during the repair of bone fractures, can provide information about the quality of the bone. To understand
the variability and anisotropic behaviour of cortical bone tissue, specimens cut from three anatomic positions of pig and bovine were
investigated at the same drilling speed and feed rate. Results: The experimental results showed that the drilling force does not only vary
from one animal bone to another, but also vary within the same bone due to its changing microstructure. Drilling force does not give
a direct indication of bone quality; therefore it has been correlated with screw pull-out force to provide a realistic estimation of the bone
quality. A significantly high value of correlation (r2 = 0.93 for pig bones and r2 = 0.88 for bovine bones) between maximum drilling
force and normalised screw pull-out strength was found. Conclusions: The results show that drilling data can be used to indicate bone
quality during orthopaedic surgery