Pie crusting of ligaments

• Main Author: Yap, Aylsworth Kuang Sheng
• Other Authors: Chou Siaw Meng
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
• Subjects: Engineering::Mechanical engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/141665
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Pie-crusting is a surgical technique that is done by performing multiple perforations on the ligament. Perforations are done using surgical blades or needles. Pie-crusting is primarily done to the Lateral collateral ligament (LCL) which has similar properties to the medial collateral ligament (MCL). MCL is the ligament that connects thigh bone to shin bone. It is located on the inner sides of our knee joints. However, doing pie-crusting on the MCL have not been proven to be safe currently. There are suspicions of mechanical weakening in the MCL ligament integrity after pie-crusting. The objective of this study is to determine the biomechanical behaviour of the MCL due to pie-crusting. In this study, three different groups of data were compared. They are the intact (0-puncture), 5-puncture and 10-puncture. Data like ultimate tensile strength, maximum load, stiffness and Young’s modulus were the parameters selected to determine differences between the 3 groups. From the tensile tests, statistical data gathered from the experiments did not show significant differences (p < 0.05) across the 3 groups. For intact results, the Young’s modulus, stiffness, ultimate tensile strength and ultimate load were 99.53 ± 13.15 MPa, 71.45 ± 12.10 N/mm, 24.91 ± 7.90 MPa and 752.48 ± 130.06 N respectively. For 5 punctures in the same order 114.32 ± 65.16 MPa, 72.42 ± 17.72 N/mm, 25.86 ± 14.29 MPa and 829.10 ± 242.18 N. For 10 punctures, 94.93 ± 50.15 MPa and 61.82 ± 44.76 N/mm, 23.86 ± 15.26 MPa and 694.83 ± 511.73 N. One tailed t-tests carried out on the experimental data consistently gave p-values more than 0.05. It is probable that standard deviations resulting from the experiments were too large and more experiments should be conducted.