Abstract
Introduction
Total hip arthroplasty (THA) is one of the most common orthopedic surgeries. The procedure is sophisticated and in addition to several factors affecting the outcomes such as patient's status, surgeon's expertise and implant type, using appropriate surgical tools is necessary. Acetabular component implantation necessitates the surgeon to ream the acetabular fossa which is time consuming and devastating. Utilizing currently-used reamers (figure 1), the size of the tool must be changed repeatedly for 5–20 times within a surgery. In every stage, the size of the reamer is increased up to 1–2 mm. This tiring process takes 15–30 minutes and is associated with some injuries to the soft tissue. Furthermore, the risk of mistakes is considerable.
Objectives
Designing a new system which overcomes the limitations and defects with previous systems
Methods
Regarding the defects of currently used reaming tools, we designed a tool mounted on the drill. This tool has 3 pairs of reaming blades placed with 120° angle relative to each other (figure 2).
Results
The new tool is applicable for all the diameters between 38–58 mm with 0.2 mm accuracy. We evaluated the efficacy of the tool in vitro (figure 3) and found that maxiaml error in acetabular radius is 0.1 mm.
Conclusions
The new reaming system is an appropriate and efficient system for exact reaming of the acetabulum.
