Faculty Collaboration Database

The Human Lumbar Spine During High-Rate Under Seat Loading: A Combined Metric Injury Criteria. Ann Biomed Eng 2021 Nov;49(11):3018-3030

Date

07/24/2021

Pubmed ID

34297262

DOI

10.1007/s10439-021-02823-x

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-85111154516 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   10 Citations

Abstract

Modern changes in warfare have shown an increased incidence of lumbar spine injuries caused by underbody blast events. The susceptibility of the lumbar spine during these scenarios could be exacerbated by coupled moments that act with the rapid compressive force depending on the occupant's seated posture. In this study, a combined loading lumbar spine vertebral body fracture injury criteria (L_ic) across a range of postures was established from 75 tests performed on instrumented cadaveric lumbar spine specimens. The spines were predominantly exposed to axial compressive forces from an upward vertical thrust with 64 of the tests resulting in at least one vertebral body fracture and 11 in no vertebral body injury. The proposed L_ic utilizes a recommended metric (κ), based on prismatic beam failure theory, resulting from the combination of the T12-L1 resultant sagittal force and the decorrelated bending moment with optimized critical values of F_r,crit = 5824 N and M_y,crit = 1155 Nm. The 50% risk of lumbar spine injury corresponded to a combined metric of 1, with the risk decreasing with the combined metric value. At 50% injury risk the Normalized Confidence Interval Size improved from 0.24 of a force-based injury reference curve to 0.17 for the combined loading metric.

Author List

Ortiz-Paparoni M, Op 't Eynde J, Kait J, Bigler B, Shridharani J, Schmidt A, Cox C, Morino C, Pintar F, Yoganandan N, Moore J, Zhang J, Bass CR

Authors

Frank A. Pintar PhD Chair, Professor in the Biomedical Engineering department at Medical College of Wisconsin
Narayan Yoganandan PhD Professor in the Neurosurgery department at Medical College of Wisconsin

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Aged
Blast Injuries
Explosions
Fractures, Bone
Humans
Lumbar Vertebrae
Male
Middle Aged
Spinal Injuries
Stress, Mechanical