The European Federation of National Associations of Orthopaedics and Traumatology (EFORT) recently hosted its 23rd Congress in Lisbon, Portugal. This years main theme was Modern Patient Needs – Challenges and Solutions In Orthopaedics and Trauma.
PhD student Rob Elkington along with NU-SPINE Early Stage Researchers Beril Yenigul and Kaushikk Iyer all attended to present their orthopaedic biotribology projects to one of Europes largest meetings of knee, hip, and spine surgeons and researchers.
Kaushikk Iyer presented his ongoing research work which demonstrates the development of a novel portable benchtop setup that act as a representative to an orthopaedic joint wear simulator used as a pre-clinical evaluation tool for the testing of spine, hip and knee prostheses. Using Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) simulation, advanced control algorithms can be designed and tested rigorously and rapidly on the setup before its deployment into the joint wear simulator to test profiles of ISO standards and beyond that represent daily-living activities of patients.
Rob Elkington presented his poster on ‘Biomimetic PEEK Surfaces For Cartilage Preserving Focal Resurfacing’ which employs novel highly lubricious polymer brush systems optimised to interface with cartilage and preserve healthy tissue for minimally invasive focal cartilage repairs and hemiarthroplasty to delay and mitigate the need for total joint replacements.
Beril presented her poster on the ‘Design of Facet Joint Resurfacing Bearings for Tribological Testing Purposes’ which showcases a new paradigm in preclinical testing for facet joint implants in a custom built simulator.
Header Image: Kaushikk Iyer, Rob Elkington, Beril Yenigul who are all studying PhDs in Medical Engineering at the University of Leeds.