塑造未来的髋关节置换

Many of us have had or know people who have had hip replacement surgeries, 但很少有人去想手术台上到底发生了什么.

例如, did you know that traditional total hip replacement procedures require big incisions through the gluteus muscles that enable surgeons to clearly see the hip joint?

这听起来就很冒昧. But there’s another, less intrusive way to perform the surgery—和 a team of researchers in the 丹尼尔·菲利克斯·里奇工程与计算机科学学院 提高其成功的几率吗.

正如Chadd鼠尾草属的植物所说, 机械与材料工程副教授, 解释了, “Traditional hip replacement is a very intrusive process because you're separating big muscles to get access to the hip joint below.“然而, 他补充说, “在过去的十年左右, there's been a big shift to performing total hip replacement through an anterior approach. 切口在髋关节的前面.”

A more direct path to the joint via smaller incisions means the surgeon is cutting through less muscle, which improves patient recovery—but this approach reduces the surgeon’s view of the joint.

Clary 和 his team are working on giving surgeons the proper tools to get implants into the right orientation when their visibility is reduced. 得到了来自 瑞穗OSI, 这家位于旧金山湾区的公司专门生产手术台, they are assessing pelvic mobility during anterior-approach total hip replacement using the company’s Hana手术台.

Hana台允许在手术中改变骨盆的方向. “当你做手术时，你的身体是被操纵的. 它被推进了. 这是调整. They have to dislocate your hip to place the components,” Clary 解释了. The table also permits X-rays during operations to confirm implant placement.

The procedure, however, is complicated by the fact that everyone’s pelvis moves differently. “The way your pelvis moves is very much a characteristic of who you are. 每个人的骨盆似乎都以自己的方式运动,凯西·迈尔斯解释道。, 机械与材料工程研究副教授. 里奇的团队正在记录这一特殊的运动, 他们称之为针对病人的骨盆运动方法.

另一个关键因素是, 当外科医生在病人体内植入人工关节时, they’re seeing the orientation of the pelvis on the operating table—which, 鼠尾草属的说, “is not necessarily a reflection of where the pelvis is when someone is st和ing. When you st和 that pelvis can take a very different orientation that is influenced by your lumbar spine.”

各种测试可以帮助外科医生做出适当的调整, such as fluoroscopy—taking moving X-rays of patients as they perform tasks such as sitting in a chair, 站起来走路. The team correlates the functional orientation of the pelvis during these dynamic activities to their supine position on the Hana table. That helps determine what factors need to be accounted for during surgery.

杜的 骨科生物力学中心 是否具备研究这些因素的独特条件, with its suite of six laboratories for data collection in areas such as computational biomechanics, 人类动力学, 以及生物材料和测试.

“杜的 a unique site because the labs complement each other,” says Myers. “We're able to take a question 和 come at it from different directions to have a comprehensive solution or description of what we're after.”

团队成员凯瑟琳·科隆, 一个三年级的博士生, 对实验室中可用的一系列技术表示赞赏, 比如计算机建模, 激光扫描仪, 3D printing for special experimental components 和 equipment that simultaneously collects motion 和 force data.

“当我选择正规赌博十大平台排行时，我意识到这正是我一直在寻找的. 我在别的地方都找不到. 我很幸运，”科隆说.

该团队能够与真正的病人合作，通过与 Dr. 约瑟夫Assini of Swedish Medical Center in Englewood, Colorado, who performs hip replacement surgeries, 和 DePuy辛迪思, 强生公司的医疗设备子公司, which is providing funding for “in vivo” data collection—studying how the pelvises of patients move during functional activities in the lab.

“T把这个搞定, 在任何时间点, we probably had 10 or 12 people in the room doing different components of making this experiment run the way that it was intended to,克莱尔说。.

The team excels at problem-solving 和 thinking collaboratively, Colone says. “无论测试过程中遇到什么挑战, we always find a way to collect the data we need to get the results we’re looking for.”

Colone says she’s planning to continue working in the field of medical devices 和 orthopaedics after graduation. “Everything I'm learning here is applicable to what I could be doing anywhere outside the lab, 我所获得的知识,她说。. “All the different technologies we've used will translate nicely into whatever field I end up doing research.”

Everyone on the team chose the field of orthopaedic biomechanics because they wanted to help improve the quality of people’s lives.

“如果你有髋关节疼痛, 它正在影响你的生活质量, you shouldn't put off doing a hip replacement out of a lack of underst和ing of what's involved,克莱尔说。. “我知道做手术可能很可怕，但结果非常好.”