The force at the implant cannot be assessed by the mallet force–Unless supported by a model

by Peter J. Schlieker, Michael M. Morlock, Gerd Huber

The implantation of uncemented prostheses requires the application of sufficient forces to achieve a press-fit of the implant in the bone. Excessive forces have to be omitted to limit bone damage. Force measurements along the force transmission path between mallet and implant are frequently used to investigate this trade-off. Placing a load cell at a position of interest (PoI), which might be the implant bone interface or the head taper junction, is technically challenging or even impossible so that nearby positions are chosen. Thus, a certain inertia and stiffness remain between the PoI and the sensor, and consequently the measured dynamic forces differ from those at the PoI. This experimental and numerical study aimed to investigate the amount of force reduction along the transmission path while joining femoral heads to stem tapers. Forces were measured in vitro at the tip of the mallet, directly above the polymer tip of the impactor and below the stem taper. Springs and masses were used to represent the responding tissue of a patient. A semi-empirical numerical model of the force transmission path was developed and validated in order to simulate a larger range of responding tissue properties than experimentally possible and to investigate the influence of different surgical instruments. A distinct attenuation was observed since the peak forces at the impactor reached 35% of the applied peak forces and 21% at the stem taper, respectively. The force curves were replicated with a median root mean square error of 3.8% of the corresponding mallet blow for the impactor and 3.6% for the stem. The force measurement position and the used surgical instruments have a strong influence on the measured forces. Consequently, the exact measurement conditions with regard to sensor positioning and used surgical instruments have to be specified and hence only studies with similar setups should be compared to avoid misestimation of the forces at the PoI. The proposed dynamic numerical model is a useful tool to calculate the impact of the chosen or changed mechanical parameters prior to executing experiments and also to extrapolate the effect of changing the applied forces to the resulting forces at the PoI.