A miniaturised actuation system embedded in an instrumented knee implant for postoperative ligament imbalance...

During Total Knee Arthroplasty surgery, the orthopaedic surgeon has to set up proper balance conditions for the two lateral ligaments of the knee. Such ligament tensioning procedure is performed manually and mainly depends on the surgeon's experience. Unfortunately, inaccuracies are unavoidable and may give rise to serious postoperative complications. In the worst-case scenario, the only solution to this problem is represented by revision surgery. In order to cope with this problem, this work proposes a novel instrumented tibial component able to detect knee imbalance conditions in the postoperative period. A miniaturised actuation system embedded in the tibial baseplate allows to restore optimal balance conditions without resorting to revision surgery.