• Med Eng Phys · Mar 2012

    Review

    Review of techniques for monitoring the healing fracture of bones for implementation in an internally fixated pelvis.

    • Lydia Chwang Yuh Wong, Wing Kong Chiu, Matthias Russ, and Susan Liew.
    • Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Australia. Lydia.Wong@monash.edu
    • Med Eng Phys. 2012 Mar 1; 34 (2): 140-52.

    AbstractSacral fractures from high-impact trauma often cause instability in the pelvic ring structure. Treatment is by internal fixation which clamps the fractured edges together to promote healing. Healing could take up to 12 weeks whereby patients are bedridden to avoid hindrances to the fracture from movement or weight bearing activities. Immobility can lead to muscle degradation and longer periods of rehabilitation. The ability to determine the time at which the fracture is stable enough to allow partial weight-bearing is important to reduce hospitalisation time. This review looks into different techniques used for monitoring the fracture healing of bones which could lead to possible methods for in situ and non-invasive assessment of healing fracture in a fixated pelvis. Traditional techniques being used include radiology and CT scans but were found to be unreliable at times and very subjective in addition to being non in situ. Strain gauges have proven to be very effective for accurate assessment of fracture healing as well as stability for long bones with external fixators but may not be suitable for an internally fixated pelvis. Ultrasound provides in situ monitoring of stiffness recovery but only assesses local fracture sites close to the skin surface and has only been tested on long bones. Vibration analysis can detect non-uniform healing due to its assessment of the overall structure but may suffer from low signal-to-noise ratio due to damping. Impedance techniques have been used to assess properties of non-long bones but recent studies have only been conducted on non-biological materials and more research needs to be done before it can be applicable for monitoring healing in the fixated pelvis.Copyright © 2011 IPEM. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…