Mj. Kowalski et al., A COMPARATIVE BIOMECHANICAL EVALUATION OF A NONCONTACTING PLATE AND CURRENTLY USED DEVICES FOR TIBIAL FIXATION, The journal of trauma, injury, infection, and critical care, 40(1), 1996, pp. 5-9
The appearance of porous bone under fixation plates during fracture he
aling, attributed to disturbance of blood supply by the plate, has led
to new plate designs with reduced plate to bone contact. The fixation
stability afforded by these devices, in comparison to implants common
ly used for fixation, is not well known. Therefore, the construct stif
fnesses of osteotomized synthetic tibiae fixed with dynamic compressio
n plates, external fixators, or two configurations of noncontact plate
s were compared in axial compression, bending, and torsion with and wi
thout cortical contact at the osteotomy site. The results of this stud
y show that (1) the noncontact plated constructs achieve comparable fi
xation rigidity to constructs using dynamic compression plates or exte
rnal fixators, if applied at a distance no greater than 5 mm from the
surface of the tibia, and (2) the fixation rigidity of the noncontact
plate decreases as the distance between plate and bone surface increas
es.