| During certain orthopaedic procedures such as total hip or total knee arthroplasty, it is necessary to ream the intramedullary canal of long bones prior to the insertion of the implant. This reaming procedure can generate significant intramedullary pressure elevations, potentially leading to the release of embolic fat into the blood stream, and thus increasing the risk of a potentially fatal complication, i.e., fat embolism syndrome. In this thesis, a two layer synthetic bone analogue with open cell porosity and mechanical properties similar to that of real bone was developed and used to evaluate the effect of reaming parameters such as RPM, advancement speed, reamer size, bone marrow viscosity and clogged reamer on resulting intramedullary pressure elevations. All the aforementioned parameters, except the reamer size, were found to significantly influence the medullary pressure. It was found that increases in the reamer advancement speed increased the pressure, whereas increases in the reamer RPM decreased the pressure. The correlation between the simulated intramedullary pressure, imposed forces to the bone and applied torque to the reamer was also assessed. No significant correlations between these variables could be established. |
