Intro:

Hip replacements are one of the most popular surgeries that are done, they typically occur with the older population since they are done in order to improve the function of the hip. What I did not know is how important the material in the hip implants are and how different scenarios might require different material. This made me think about how that as more materials are discovered, we can help more people and offer better ways to preform this surgery.

Skills I learned/developed:

✅ AutoCADing of implants

✅ Scientific Researching

✅ Working with a partner instead of a team

✅ 3D printing

✅ Creating poster boards

✅ How to present as a team

Process:

Problem:

❗Our patient had severe stiffness and pain in their hip, This was partly due to the fact of the medicine that they were taking, which we could not manipulate due to their medical circumstances.

• 🔍Diagnosis: Firstly, we had to diagnose our patient first by looking at X-Rays of their hips, after our diagnosis. We figured that our patient has many diseases such as osteoarthritis and osteoporosis, they also had Hyperparathyroidism which coupled with osteoporosis caused them to have very weak bones.

Hip X-Ray of our patient

• 🔬Research: Our team started to wonder which materials should be used and what the design should be, and this is when I came up with an idea; I figured that there is nothing to be done with the design and that we should just focus on the material making sure we pick materials that are perfect and that have a good future. And that is the route that we decided to take, but looking back at it I think there could have been some changes that could have also been done to the design in order to complement the specific materials that we chose.

• 🪨Material selection: I knew that we had to focus on her weak bones as they posed a great risk not only during the surgery but also in the long run. I decided to research for healing materials that could maybe strengthen the bone, and so I found one material called gum tragacanth which has shown promising results in bone healing and so our team suggested that we use this material as an coating of the implant.

• 🏥Surgical Fixation: Another problem that we had to deal with was the surgical fixation of the implant. Since our patient had weak bones using screws which is the most common method would be very risky and such we had to come up with a way to fixate the implant in place. During my research I also found another material called nitinol. This material has a shape memory effect which basically makes it remember the way it was shaped before it has been bent and it can come back to that shape after a certain temperature is applied. With that being said, I figured that a very promising way to fixate the implant would be to use the nitinol on the stem and bend it before it is placed inside the body and then using the shape memory effect we can make it expand and fixate the implant in place.

Nitinol shape memory effect

• ⚒️AutoCAD of the implant: This project had 2 subteams; coding and CADing. I was placed in the CADing subteam and so our job was to draw and shape the implant. I was responsible for the stem meanwhile my partner was responsible for the head and cup.

CAD design of implant