Effects of tendon viscoelasticity on the distribution of forces across sutures in a model tendon-to-bone repair.

ABSTRACT: Tears to the rotator cuff often require surgical repair. These repairs often culminate in re-tearing when sutures break through the tendon in the weeks following repair. Although numerous studies have been performed to identify suturing strategies that reduce this risk by balancing forces across sutures, none have accounted for how the viscoelastic nature of tendon influences load sharing. With the aim of providing insight into this problem, we studied how tendon viscoelasticity, tendon stiffness, and suture anchor spacing affect this balancing of forces across sutures. Results from a model of a three-row sutured re-attachment demonstrated that optimized distributions of suture stiffnesses and of the spacing of suture anchors can balance the forces across sutures to within a few percent, e

SUBMITTER: Huang Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10756498 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature