EVALUATION OF ANATOMICALLY CONTOURED L-PLATE ABOUT STRUCTURAL STABILITY, CLINICAL SAFETY AND STRESS DISTRIBUTION BY USING FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS

IntroductionThe use of open wedge high tibial osteotomy (OWHTO) to reduce knee pain by transferring weight-bearing loads to the relatively unaffected lateral compartment in varus knees and to delay the need for a knee replacement by slowing or stopping destruction of the medial joint compartment. To maintain the stability of OWHTO, the most common type of plate was T-Plate as the locking compression plate (LCP) concept. Anterior portion of T-Plate infringe patient's soft tissue resulted in some complications, whereas anatomical L-plate does not. To evaluate the structural stability of the anatomically contoured L-plate in the present study, the effect of weight bearing after osteotomy should be reviewed in the point of the stress of the plate and screws. We hypothesize that its stress path diverge through collateral portion of tibia and the stress level in screws lowered comparing to the result of T-plate presented in existing literature.Materials and MethodsBased on the postoperative CT data were made fr...