Spinal Biomechanics
Mohammad Javad Einafshar; Seyed Ataollah Hashemi; Pedram Mojgani
Volume 14, Issue 3 , October 2020, , Pages 169-177
Abstract
Back pain is a common medical problem. There is no clear cause for the back pain problem so far, but in most cases, spinal instability can be noted. Lumbar spine fixation is performed to treat the problems of low back pain. Spinal fixation can be done with or without surgery. One of the surgical methods ...
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Back pain is a common medical problem. There is no clear cause for the back pain problem so far, but in most cases, spinal instability can be noted. Lumbar spine fixation is performed to treat the problems of low back pain. Spinal fixation can be done with or without surgery. One of the surgical methods is the use of spinal screws in which the strength and stability of the screw are of great importance. The strength and stability of the screw in the bone reduces the time and cost of treatment, reduces the amount of bleeding and accelerates the patient's treatment. In this study, screws were inserted using a digital torque meter. An impact was applied using an impact hammer and resonated sound was recorded using a microphone. The vibration mode of the screw was obtained by processing the signal generated by MATLAB R2017 software and plotting the fast Fourier transform. Finally, tensile test was performed to obtain the ultimate pull-out force. The innovation of this study was to use modal analysis method and to correlate its results with that of the ultimate pull-out force and peak insertion torque. In this study, five screws with different screw depth, and screw thread crest thickness were examined. Also, the effect of self-tapping was investigated. The peak insertion torque, ultimate pull-out strength and natural frequency occurred at 182 Nm, 992 N and 1916 Hz, respectively, for the cylindrical pedicle screw. By comparing the obtained data, results showed a linear relationship between insertion torque and pull-out force of the screws. Due to the lack of significant difference between natural frequency and pull-out force of the self-drilling and non-self-drilling tip screws (comparing between screws number 3 and 4 and between 1 and 5), the use of self-tapping screws can be advantageous. The trend of the dependent parameters in all three methods i.e. insertion torque, pull-out force and natural frequency are the same, indicating the non-destructive advantage of modal analysis in in-vivo surgical application.
