Total knee replacement is a viable treatment for end-stage knee arthritis. With a greater number of younger patients opting for total knee replacement surgery, their increasingly active lifestyles will result in higher wear rates while decreasing the life expectancy of the tibial insert component of the knee replacement implant. In response to the eventuality of patients with more active lifestyles requiring knee replacement surgery, this research proposed to accurately estimate in vivo knee loading over a gait cycle using a dynamically consistent whole-body modeling and simulation method. However, medical treatment based on modeling and simulation must be validated before clinical application becomes feasible.
Estimates for knee loading were compared to publicly-available in vivo knee loading measurements from a telemetric implant [1]. A whole-body musculoskeletal modeling approach was used to simulate the gait cycle of a person who had undergone total knee replacement surgery. This approach was used to calculate net knee joint contact forces. Results suggest that generic whole-body modeling and hybrid forward dynamic simulation techniques for estimating knee joint loads may become clinically feasible in the near future.
In vivo knee loading characteristics during activities of daily living as measured by an instrumented total knee replacement
