A novel sideways fall simulator to study hip fractures ex vivo.

• Main Authors: Ingmar Fleps, Muriel Vuille, Angela Melnyk, Stephen J Ferguson, Pierre Guy, Benedikt Helgason, Peter A Cripton
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2018-01-01
• Series: PLoS ONE
• Online Access: http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC6057661?pdf=render

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.