REDUCING EARLY INTRAPROSTHETIC DISLOCATION BY USING PERSONALIZED HIP JOINT PROSTHESIS DESIGN AND VIRTUAL PREOPERATIVE PLANNING

ABSTRACT

Early intra-prosthetic dislocation is one of the most common postoperative complications in Total Hip Arthroplasty (T.H.A.), for both women and men, affecting between 3-5% of patients. The main causes of early intra-prosthetic dislocation are due to the incorrect positioning of the hip joint prosthetic components (including the attention paid by the surgeon with respect to the anteversion or torsion angle), the patient’s muscular diseases, or the geometry of the prosthetic components which are not totally compatible with the patient’s anatomy. Nowadays more and more surgeons tend to adopt the idea of virtual preoperative planning, in order to better understand the complexity of the orthopedic issues faced by any patient, and to fix the prosthetic parts as accurately as possible. In this way, the orthopedic surgery is less invasive and the probability of patients developing postoperative complications is reduced. This paper aims to validate the custom hip joint prosthesis design by using the Reverse Engineering (R.E.) Method based on Computer Tomographic (C.T.) images of a patient with articular issues, while taking into account dynamic Finite Element Analysis (F.E.A) simulations of the main hip joint movements (flexion, extension, adduction, abduction, external and internal rotation).

Keywords: hip joint, prosthesis, stem, acetabular cup, customized, personalized, preoperative planning