TEHRAN (ANA)- Researchers at an Iranian knowledge-based company active in manufacturing orthopedic equipment succeeded in designing and manufacturing orthopedic implants for fractures in hand and foot joints.
“The important point about these products, which is considered as an advantage, is the indigenization of the design and production process of these implants with very high precision and high-tech lathe and press machines,” Sadeq Qafrani, a technical expert at the knowledge-based company, told ANA.
“Before production of orthopedic implants, all these devices and the production process in general, including infrastructure, technical equipment and materials needed for manufacturing, were imported from Germany and the US,” he added.
“Two solutions are suggested for the patients who have suffered joint fractures, specially in delicate areas like ankles, wrists, etc.; the first is the use of fixator or bone stabilizers, and the second way is the use of implants that are placed inside the skin,” Qafrani said.
He reminded that the orthopedic implants require devices with the ability to grind titanium due to the complications and delicacy they have in the process of making and cutting chips.
In a relevant development late 2022, a group of Iranian researchers from Sharif University of Technology had also succeeded in developing a platform for designing and manufacturing customized titanium implants to replace bone.
“The remarkable thing about custom implant production is that each product is designed and manufactured specifically and based on the specifications of any patient, and therefore it is different from other products,” said Farzam Farahmand, a faculty member of the Mechanical Engineering Department of Sharif University of Technology.
He added that unlike the common mode of industrial production in which the product is standardized, in customized production, the product cannot be standardized, but the production process chain must be standardized.
“In this project, all stages of designing, manufacturing and finishing operations of customized titanium implants have been studied, modeled, analyzed and tested,” Farahmand said, adding that the production process chain includes conceptual and detailed design, manufacturing based on the SLM method, completion of surface and thermal operations and final processing like washing and sterilization, and all these stages have been optimized, standardized and documented.
“Customized bone replacement implants have wide applications in various types of surgery, specially maxillofacial surgery and orthopedic surgery. The platform developed in this project is capable of designing and production of different types of these implants, including articular and non-articular implants, cemented and non-cemented implants (direct connection of implant and bone), solid and porous implants, and implants bearing small, medium (such as bite force) and large mechanical loads (such as weight force) optimally and standardly,” he underlined.
Source: ANA