Spine
Seyyed Mohammad Moein Fatemi; Mohammad Nikkhoo; Mostafa Rostami; Chih-Hsiu Cheng
Abstract
In recent years, spinal fusion surgery has become one of the most common treatments for spinal cord injuries, while the interbody cages, which replace the damaged interbody discs in the surgeries, have undergone extensive changes in design and material. These changes are quite visible, ranging from plain ...
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In recent years, spinal fusion surgery has become one of the most common treatments for spinal cord injuries, while the interbody cages, which replace the damaged interbody discs in the surgeries, have undergone extensive changes in design and material. These changes are quite visible, ranging from plain titanium cages made using the conventional manufacturing methods to customized porous titanium cages, which are made using additive manufacturing technology, or titanium-coated polymer cages. Among all the materials used in manufacturing the interbody cages, PolyEther Ether Ketone (PEEK) and titanium are the most common ones. Each of these two has its own advantages and disadvantages. Several studies have compared these two materials, mostly based on the two characteristics of subsidence and fusion rates. The present study performed a comprehensive review of the published clinical studies comparing the titanium and PEEK cages in order to make a comprehensive evaluation of these two. According to the reviewed studies, both materials had relatively similar results in subsidence rate, with no significant difference. However, it was shown that the titanium cages had a better fusion rate and subsequently were more likely to be successful in the clinical settings than the PEEK cages.
zahra khoz; mohammad nikkhoo; Chih-Hsiu Cheng
Abstract
Background: Low back pain is one of the most common problems that force individuals to seek medical care. Since surgery is the last treatment strategy, predicting the process of conducting surgical procedures seems beneficial and somehow crucial. In this regard, the first step is having a validated biomechanical ...
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Background: Low back pain is one of the most common problems that force individuals to seek medical care. Since surgery is the last treatment strategy, predicting the process of conducting surgical procedures seems beneficial and somehow crucial. In this regard, the first step is having a validated biomechanical model based on the anatomical parameters of patients’ lumbar spine. Despite the impressive progress in this field, there is still a need to designing a model that could include important anatomical parameters and be applicable in terms of clinical applications.Methods: This study aimed to develop the personalized spinal finite element model with 23 anatomical parameters. The initial data was extracted from the radiology picture of the average healthy volunteers and was designed in Catia software. Afterwards, the finite element model was analyzed in Abaqus, and results of the range of motion of motionsegments in movements of flexion, extension and left and right lateral bending were verified based on the results of experimental studies present in the literature.Results: In order to observe the application of the patient-specific spinal parametric model, a model of a patient after spinal fusion was presented. Moreover, results of the range of motion of the motion segments and intradiscal pressure were compared to the healthy model.Conclusion: Since acceptable results were obtained at each step, it is possible to predict the result of spinal fusion and compare the biomechanical results in case of decreased or increased fusion level by developing a parametric parient-specific model for each patient, which can be an effective achievement for clinical fields.
