Professor Bergita Ganse from Universität des Saarlandes delivered an excellent and inspiring scientific seminar on Smart implants for improved bone fracture healing.
In trauma surgery, current implants are almost always passive without sensing or actuation capabilities. However, sensing of changes in mechanical properties and active mechanical stimulation of the fracture gap could improve rehabilitation and facilitate healing.
It is undoubtedly a challenge to build active implants contained inside the body that apply the needed stimuli. Technological advances in material science and systems engineering open up new opportunities. Shape memory alloys (SMA), such as Nitinol have the ability to shorten if warmed up, and changes in their electrical resistance correlate with changes in length. SMA wires embedded in a fracture plate or nail allow the implant to stimulate the fracture gap by shortening and lengthening, but also changes in stiffness or even orientation could be implemented.
In today’s talk, first concepts, patents and demonstrators from the research project Smart Implants were presented and discussed.
Bergita Ganse is a full professor for Innovative Implant Development (Fracture Healing) at Saarland University in Germany, where she is leading the 8-million Euro project ‘Smart Implants’, funded by the Werner Siemens Foundation. Bergita is a physiologist and an orthopaedic surgeon, trained in Germany and in the UK. Apart from fracture healing and implant development, her research deals with space medicine and the musculoskeletal system in spaceflight, immobilization and ageing. She is a co-investigator of an experiment on the International Space Station, the PI of a research project in Antarctiva and involved in large international studies working with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Further details: www.bergitaganse.de