BACKGROUND Most dental implants are positioned using a drilling surgery technique. However, dentistry recently experienced the implementation of piezoelectric surgery. This technique was introduced to overcome some of the limitations involving rotating instruments in bone surgery. This study used biomolecular and histologic analyses to compare the osseointegration of porous implants positioned ...

STUDY DESIGN Prospective, randomized, controlled study. OBJECTIVE To report the results of using the PediGuard (SpineGuard, Inc., San Francisco, CA), a local electrical conductivity measurement device, to reduce radiation exposure while drilling the pilot hole for pedicle screw placement. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA Reports of pedicle screw placement in the lumbar spine have shown medial ped...

Objective. This study aimed to evaluate effects of type 1 diabetes mellitus and mini-implant placement method on the primary stability of mini-implants by comparing mechanical stability and microstructural/histological differences. Methods. After 4 weeks of diabetic induction, 48 mini-implants (24 self-tapping and 24 self-drilling implants) were placed on the tibia of 6 diabetic and 6 normal ra...

BACKGROUND We developed an image-guided robot system to provide mechanical assistance for skull base drilling, which is performed to gain access for some neurosurgical interventions, such as tumour resection. The motivation for introducing this robot was to improve safety by preventing the surgeon from accidentally damaging critical neurovascular structures during the drilling procedure. METH...

OBJECTIVE To assess if the screw design (self-drilling/self-tapping) and the pilot hole tapping could affect the insertion torque and screw pullout strength of the screw used in anterior fixation of the cervical spine. METHODS Forty self-tapping screws and 20 self-drilling screws were inserted into 10 models of artificial bone and 10 cervical vertebrae of sheep. The studied parameters were th...

Introduction: Osteochondrosis dissecans (OD) is a chronic subchondral lesion potentially affecting almost every joint. The etiology still remains unclear. Vascular, traumatic, infectious and genetic causes have been discussed. While stage I (Berndt and Harty classification) can spontaneously heal, the next stages require operative treatment. At stage II it consists of a retrograde drilling of t...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the initial stability of dual-thread miniscrews by analyzing the strain at the bone-implant interface and insertion torque during implantation in artificial bone models with different cortical bone thicknesses. MATERIALS AND METHODS Insertion torque, and strain, measured with a five-element strain gauge in 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0-mm artificial cortical bone, during insertion ...

Headless screws are favored for internal fixation in the treatment of displaced or unstable small bone (e.g., Scaphoid) fractures, because they are embedded below the articular surface of the bone, reducing tissue irritation and immobilization. Compression plays an important role in fracture stability, maintaining gap reduction and also accelerating the healing of cancellous bone [1]. There are...

Drilling tools currently used in surgery depends only on the surgeon’s manual skills to stop the penetration when completing a hole. This paper presents a modular mechatronic system for automatic bone drilling in surgery. The development of a “modular system” that is compatible with motor-driven drills that are commercially available, rather than developing a new surgical drill, is emphasized. ...

Effective gas management is vital to the success of the longwall mining in the Bulli seam, in the Southern Coalfield, Sydney Basin, NSW, Australia. The evolution of gas drainage methods and practices are discussed with respect to gas type, gas drainage lead time and prevailing geological conditions. Both underground to inseam drilling and surface to inseam drilling techniques are described at b...