Ultrasonic-assisted drilling of cortical and cancellous bone in a comparative point of view

During bone drilling, a common procedure in clinical surgeries, excessive heat generation and drilling force can cause damage to bone tissue, potentially leading to failure of implants and fixation screws or delayed healing. With this in mind, the aim of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of ultrasonic-assisted drilling compared to conventional drilling as a potential method for bone drilling.

This study examined optimal drilling parameters based on previous findings and investigated both cortical and cancellous bone. In addition to evaluating drilling force and temperature elevation, the effects of these factors on osteonecrosis and micro-crack formation were explored in ultrasonic-assisted and conventional drilling through histopathological assessment and microscopic imaging. To this end, three drilling speeds and two drilling feed-rates were considered as variables in the in vitro experiments. Furthermore, numerical modeling provided insight into temperature distribution during the drilling process in both methods and compared three different vibration amplitudes.

Although temperature elevations were lower in the conventional drilling, ultrasonic-assisted drilling produced less drilling force. Additionally, the latter method resulted in smaller osteonecrosis regions and did not produce micro-cracks in cortical bone or structural damage in cancellous bone.

Ultrasonic-assisted drilling, which caused less damage to bone tissue in both cortical and cancellous bone, was comparatively more advantageous. Notably, this study demonstrated that to determine the superiority of one method over the other, we cannot rely solely on temperature variation results. Instead, we must consider the cumulative effect of both temperature elevation and drilling force.