Stemless shoulder implants have recently gained increasing popularity. Advantages include an anatomic reconstruction of the humerus with preservation of bone stock for upcoming revisions. Several implant designs have been introduced over the last years. However, only few studies evaluated the impact of the varying designs on the load transfer and bone remodeling. The aim of this study was to compare the differences between two stemless shoulder implant designs using the micro finite element (µFE) method. Two cadaveric human humeri (low and high bone mineral density) were scanned with a resolution of 82µm by high resolution peripheral quantitative computer tomography (HR-pQCT). Images were processed to allow virtual implantation of two types of reverse-engineered stemless humeral implants (Implant 1: Eclipse, Arthrex, with fenestrated cage screw and Implant 2: Simpliciti, Tornier, with three fins). The resulting images were converted to µFE models consisting of up to 78 million hexahedral elements with isotropic elastic properties based on the literature. These models were subjected to two loading conditions (medial and along the central implant axis) and solved for internal stresses with a parallel solver (parFE, ETH Zurich) on a Linux Cluster. The bone tissue stresses were analysed according to four subregions (dividing plane: sagittal and frontal) at two depths starting from the bone-implant surface and the distal region ending distally from the tip of Implant 1 (proximal, distal)Introduction
Materials and Methods
