Professor, Orthopedic Surgery University of California, Davis Davis, California
Replicas of bones made of epoxy have been developed to test the fit and performance of bone implant-constructs. Replicas offer advantages over cadaveric bones: their use eliminate ethical concerns and concerns about storage, handling, and disease transmission. Epoxy replicas, however, are weaker than bone and therefore, the mechanical performance of a construct made of affixing an orthopedic implant to an epoxy replica differs from a bone-implant construct. To boost the mechanical performance of epoxy and match its performance of bones, short glass fibers can be added to the epoxy during the curing process. These fiber-reinforced composite replicas can be used to optimize the construct performance or minimize implant strain in long-bone fracture repair with bone plates or interlocking nails or to test the bone-implant properties of novel total joint components or limb-sparing implants. This lecture will describe the rationale and fabrication process of fiber-reinforced epoxy replicas.