Citation

Fleps I, Vuille M, Melnyk A, Ferguson SJ, Guy P, Helgason B, Cripton PA. PLoS One 2018; 13(7): e0201096.

Affiliation

Orthopaedics and Injury Biomechanics Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Orthopaedics and School of Biomedical Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Public Library of Science)

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0201096

PMID

30040858

Abstract

Falls to the side are the leading cause of hip fractures in the elderly. The load that a person experiences during a fall cannot be measured with volunteers for ethical reasons. To evaluate injurious loads, while considering relevant energy input and body posture for a sideways fall, a subject-specific cadaveric impact experiment was developed. Full cadaveric femur-pelvis constructs (N = 2) were embedded in surrogate soft tissue material and attached to metallic surrogate lower limbs. The specimens were then subjected to an inverted pendulum motion, simulating a fall to the side with an impact to the greater trochanter. The load at the ground and the deformation of the pelvis were evaluated using a 6-axis force transducer and two high-speed cameras. Post-test, a trauma surgeon (PG) evaluated specimen injuries. Peak ground contact forces were 7132 N and 5641 N for the fractured and non-fractured specimen, respectively. We observed a cervical fracture of the femur in one specimen and no injuries in a second specimen, showing that the developed protocol can be used to differentiate between specimens at high and low fracture risk.

Language: en