Patient: Ke Huy-Quan
Age: Middle-Aged
History**:** Has had a hip implant for 7 years and has noticed severe pain and a drastic decrease in bone density around the implant area
Current Device: Hip-Implant
Symptoms: Shortness of breath, Gait disturbance, Severe hip pain at the joint
About: Put on weight after quitting smoking, has difficulty losing weight due to mobility constraints, has Rheumatoid arthritis, and is on a bad diet
Ke Huy-Quan’s hip implant is already revealing significant signs of failure despite only being installed for 7 years
Due to his rheumatoid arthritis, hip pain, and history of smoking it has become near impossible for him to exercise and get into better shape
<aside> 💡 Our Mission: Design a long-lasting hip replacement that prevents bone deterioration and supports the patient’s body weight and allows him to move freely.
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Our brainstorming began with outlining a list of constraints and objectives with regard to what our patient was looking for out of a replacement for his implant. This was when we came across important considerations for this type of medical device, such as requiring any material we use to be completely biologically inert and sterile. Furthermore, we were given x-ray images of how the hip implant has been affecting surrounding bone tissue over several years and were told to determine a diagnosis. We cross-referenced the x-ray images to other hip implant-related ones as well as analyzed the patient profile for possible infection. Using our accumulated research we were able to correctly diagnose our patient’s condition as aseptic loosening.
<aside> 🧠What I learned: Conducting thorough research using both given sources and external sources is imperative to developing a train of thought and coming to a conclusion
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X-ray photo demonstrating aseptic loosening of the hip implant. Source: https://radiopaedia.org/articles/aseptic-loosening-
In order to eliminate the patient’s severe hip pain at the joint we must ensure high-quality osteointegration between the implant and the bone. Our group looked into various methods of doing such and with the help of the knowledge of materials that we gained from our 1P10 course we opted to use hydroxyapatite as a coating and titanium as the primary material for the implant. Additionally, we looked into adjusting the shape of the implant to better fit the bone, following extensive research we realized this often meant extending the length thinning the femoral stem of the implant for patients dealing with aseptic loosening.
Final CAD illustrating the longer stem
<aside> 🧠What I learned: Material research was very insightful for me. When designing a medical device not only must one look for the quality of its application but also for its potential side effects on the health of the user. Speaking to the radiologist and receiving feedback from him also gave me a better understanding of how to identify the desired shape of hip implants based on X-ray imagery.
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Final 3D printed prototype hip implant for our patient
<aside> 🧠What I learned: Learned how to operate a 3D printer, convert ipt files to STL as well as troubleshoot 3d printer problems such as early failures.
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