An Experiment Investigation and FE Simulation Analysis on Elastic Traction Method Applied in the Pelvic Reduction

Abstract

Pelvic fracture is the most complicated fracture in traumatic orthopedics. Tremendous muscle resistance is the main difficulty in carrying out pelvic reduction for the physician or robot-assisted reduction surgery in the future. During pelvic fracture surgery, the traction method is commonly utilized to reduce the reduction force against the sizeable muscle resistance. We proposed an elastic traction method to provide flexibility in the pelvic reduction and reduce the force needed to reset the pelvic. According to the experimental results in this paper, when adopting the elastic traction method in surgery, the reduction force can be reduced up to 56.2%. A musculoskeletal model of pelvic fracture reduction based on spring constraints was also established and verified by the experimental data. Through the simulation model, we investigated the influences of spring stiffness on the performance of elastic traction. The simulation results show that the minor spring stiffness is, the smaller the reduction force would be. In addition, we compared the maximum stress and reduction force applied on k-wire during a single K-wire pathway holding to complete reduction. We consider that the Kirschner pin 1 pathway is the optimal pathway in pelvic reduction.