Abstract
The present study is aimed at investigating the mechanical behaviour of fabricated synthetic midthoracic paediatric spine based on range of motion (ROM) as compared to porcine spine as the biological specimen. The main interest was to ensure that the fabricated synthetic model could mimic the biological specimen behaviour. The synthetic paediatric spine was designed as a 200% scaled-up model to fit into the Bionix Servohydraulic spine simulator. Biomechanical tests were conducted to measure the ROM and nonlinearity of sigmoidal curves at six degrees of freedom (DOF) with moments at ±4 Nm before the specimens failed. Results were compared with the porcine spine (biological specimen). The differences found between the lateral bending and axial rotation of synthetic paediatric spine as compared to the porcine spine were 18% and 3%, respectively, but was still within the range. Flexion extension of the synthetic spine is a bit stiff in comparison of porcine spine with 45% different. The ROM curves of the synthetic paediatric spine exhibited nonlinearities for all motions as the measurements of neutral zone (NZ) and elastic zone (EZ) stiffness were below “1.” Therefore, it showed that the proposed synthetic paediatric spine behaved similarly to the biological specimen, particularly on ROM.
Highlights
Human adult and animal cadaveric spines such as porcine, sheep, baboon, and calf are commonly used in biomechanical investigation [1,2,3,4,5]
In the present study, fabricated synthetic paediatric spine in functional spinal unit (FSU) unit was tested with a MTS Bionix Servohydraulic spine simulator to obtain the range of motion (ROM) in flexion, extension, lateral bending, and axial rotation
The porcine spine ROM was more flexible than synthetic paediatric spine in all degrees of freedom (DOF), with a difference of 45% in flexion/extension, while the lateral bending and axial rotation of synthetic paediatric spine were in good agreement with the porcine spine, with differences of 18% and 3%, respectively
Summary
Human adult and animal cadaveric spines such as porcine, sheep, baboon, and calf are commonly used in biomechanical investigation [1,2,3,4,5]. Information on paediatric spinal biomechanics was very limited due to difficulties in obtaining paediatric human cadavers. Paediatric and adult spines were distinctively different from each other in both anatomically and mechanically, studies on paediatric spines started by scaling down from the adult size model to paediatric size model in finite element analysis [6,7,8,9,10]. The studies on paediatric spine started with manipulation of the adult finite element model to the paediatric model to incorporate anatomical differences between adult and paediatric spines. A few studies on paediatric biomechanical investigation still used human adult and immature porcine spine as their specimens due to the limitations of paediatric specimens [11,12,13]
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