Stress Analysis of Femoral Stems on Non-Cemented Total Hip Replacement - A Three-Dimensional Finite Element Analysis -

Three dimensional numerical model based on the finite element method(FEM) were developed to predict the mechanical behavior of hip implants. The purpose of this study is to investigate the stress distribution of two types of cementless total hip replacement femoral component -a straight stem and a curved stem, and to compare their effect on the stress shielding between two types by three dimensional finite element method. The authors analyzed von Mises stress in the cortex & stem and compared the stress between the straight and the curved stem. In comparison of stresses between two different design of femoral stem, there was 25% more decrease of stress in straight stem than curved stem in the medial cortex at proximal region. The straight stem had consistently much lower stresses than the curved stem throughout the whole medial cortex with maximum 70% reduction of stress. However, there was little change in stress between nature and 2 implanted femur throughout the lateral cortex. Stress of femoral stem was much higher in the straight stem than the curved stem up to 60%. The straight stem had more chance of stress shielding and a risk of fatigue fracture of the stem compared with the curved stem in noncement hip arthroplasty. In design of femoral stem still we have to consider to develop design to distribute more even stress on the proximal medial cortex.