Influence of quality of reduction using radiological criteria on kinematics and kinetics in ankle fractures with unstable syndesmotic injury.

BACKGROUND: In ankle fractures with syndesmotic injury, the anatomic reduction of the ankle mortise is crucial for preventing osteoarthritis. Yet, no studies have analysed the effect of surgical reduction after unstable ankle fractures on patients' active functional outcome. METHODS: The Intraoperative 3D imaging data of patients surgically treated between 2012 and 2019 for ankle fracture with concomitant syndesmotic injury were reviewed. 58 patients were allocated to two groups depending on whether the criteria for radiologically optimal reduction were met (39 patients) or not (19 patients). Criteria for optimal reduction were composed of objectively measured and subjectively rated data. After undertaking the Olerud/Molander ankle score, a gait analysis and several active function tests using 3D motion capture were performed in order to evaluate kinetic and kinematic differences between both groups. FINDINGS: Patients showed deficits of range of motion and balance parameters on the injured ankle, however, there were no significant differences between both groups. INTERPRETATION: Although, the data did not show that radiological reduction criteria have a statistically significant effect on active functional outcome after a mean follow up time of 5.7 years, tendencies for a better outcome of patients that met the criteria could be seen. It also must be taken into consideration that results are limited by case number and allocation ratio, which made a sub-analysis of the separate reduction criteria unfeasible.

Biomechanical comparison of a 3D-printed prosthetic foot with conventional feet in people with transtibial amputation: A prospective cohort study.

INTRODUCTION: The method of 3D printing is increasingly gaining utilization in clinical applications and may support prosthetic fitting. The aim was to compare biomechanical outcomes of people with a transtibial amputation using a novel, individualizable, 3D-printed prosthetic foot (ComfyStep, Mecuris) with two conventional, widely used prosthetic feet during level ground walking using a 3D motion analysis system. METHODS: Ten individuals with an unilateral transtibial amputation were fitted with 3 prosthetic feet (ComfyStep, Assure/Össur, DynamicMotion/Ottobock) using their current, well-fitting socket. They had at least 1 week of familiarization for each foot before gait analyses were conducted. Kinematics and kinetics as well as roll over shape (ROS) length and radius were calculated and compared between feet. RESULTS: The sound side gait parameters of the participants were comparable when using different feet. However, there were differences on the affected side. The statistical analysis revealed that the 3D-printed foot differed significantly compared with the conventional feet in the following aspects: reduced range of motion, increased plantar flexion moment, reduced plantar flexion power, larger ROS radius, less favorable energy ratio, and higher overall stiffness. CONCLUSION: In principle, 3D-printed feet have advantages over conventional "off the shelf" feet, as their biomechanical characteristics could be adjusted more in detail according to the patient needs. Although, differences between conventional feet and the ComfyStep were shown. Whether these differences have a negative clinically relevant effect remains unclear. However, results suggest that commercially available 3D-printed feet should incorporate systematically better adjustments, for example, for stiffness, to enhance prosthetic performance.

Automated detection and explainability of pathological gait patterns using a one-class support vector machine trained on inertial measurement unit based gait data.

BACKGROUND: Machine learning approaches for the classification of pathological gait based on kinematic data, e.g. derived from inertial sensors, are commonly used in terms of a multi-class classification problem. However, there is a lack of research regarding one-class classifiers that are independent of certain pathologies. Therefore, it was the aim of this work to design a one-class classifier based on healthy norm-data that provides not only a prediction probability but rather an explanation of the classification decision, increasing the acceptance of this machine learning approach. METHODS: The inertial sensor based gait kinematics of 25 healthy subjects was employed to train a one-class support vector machine. 25 healthy subjects, 20 patients after total hip arthroplasty and one transfemoral amputee served to validate the classifier. Prediction probabilities and feature importance scores were estimated for each subject. FINDINGS: The support vector machine predicted 100% of the patients as outliers from the healthy group. Three healthy subjects were predicted as outliers. The feature importance calculation revealed the hip in the sagittal plane as most relevant feature concerning the group after total hip arthroplasty. For the misclassified healthy subject with the lowest probability score the knee flexion and the pelvis obliquity were identified. INTERPRETATION: The support vector machine seems a useful tool to identify outliers from a healthy norm-group. The feature importance examination proved to provide valuable information on the musculoskeletal status of the subjects. In this combination, the present approach could be employed in various disciplines to identify abnormal gait and suggest subsequent training.

Movement Analysis in Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery - Measurement Systems and Clinical Applications. / Bewegungsanalyse in der Orthopädie und Unfallchirurgie ­ Messsysteme und deren klinische Anwendung.

BACKGROUND: Technical development lead to an enhancement of clinical movement analysis in the last few decades and expanded its research and clinical applications. Since the mid 20th century, human movement analysis has made its way into clinical practice, e.g. in treating poliomyelitis and infantile cerebral palsy. Today, it has a wide range of applications in various clinical areas. The aim of this narrative review is to illustrate the variety of camera-based systems for human movement analysis and their clinical applications, specifically in the field of orthopaedics and trauma surgery (O/U). Benefits and limitations of each system are shown. Future development and necessary improvements are discussed. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A selective literature review was undertaken with the databases PubMed and Google Scholar using keywords related to clinical human movement analysis in the field of orthopaedics and trauma surgery. Furthermore standard book references were included. RESULTS: Common video camera systems (VS) are used for basic visual movement analysis. Instrumented movement analysis systems include marker-based systems (MBS), markerless optical systems (MLS) and rasterstereographic analysis systems (VRS). VS, MBS and MLS have clinical use for dynamic examination of patients with various disorders in movement and gait. Among such are e.g. neuro-orthopaedic disorders, muscular insufficiencies, degenerative and post-trauma deficiencies with e.g. resultant pathologic leg axis. Besides the measurement of kinematic data by MBS and MLS, the combination with kinetic measurements to detect abnormal loading patterns as well as the combination with electromyography (EMG) to detect abnormal muscle function is a great advantage. Validity and reliability of kinematic measurements depend on the camera systems (MBS, MLS), the applied marker models, the joints of interest and the observed movement plane. Movements in the sagittal plane of the hip and knee joint, pelvic rotation and tilt as well as hip abduction are generally measured with high reliability. In the frontal and transverse planes of the knee and ankle joint substantial angular variabilities were noted due to the small range of motion of the joints in these planes. Soft tissue artefacts and marker placement are the biggest sources of errors. So far MLS did not improve these limitations. MBS are most accurate and remain the gold-standard in clinical and scientific movement analysis. VRS is used clinically for static 3D-analysis of the trunk posture and spine deformities. Current systems allow the dynamic measurement and visualisation of trunk and spine movement in 3D during gait and running. Planar x-ray-imaging (Cobb's angle) and to some extent cross sectional imaging with CT-scan or MRI are commonly used for the evaluation of patients with spinal deformities. VRS offers functional 3D data of trunk and spine deformities without radiation exposure, thus allowing safer clinical monitoring of the mainly infantile and adolescent patients. The accuracy, validity and reliability of measurements of different VRS-systems for the clinical use has been proven by several studies. CONCLUSION: The instrumented movement analysis is an additional tool that aids clinical practitioners of O/U in the dynamic assessment of pathologic movement and loading patterns. In conjunction with common radiologic imaging it aids in the planning of type and extent of corrective surgical interventions. In the field of orthopaedics and trauma surgery movement analysis can help as an additional diagnostic tool to develop therapeutic strategies and evaluate clinical outcomes.

SAFE: SPARQL Federation over RDF Data Cubes with Access Control.

BACKGROUND: Several query federation engines have been proposed for accessing public Linked Open Data sources. However, in many domains, resources are sensitive and access to these resources is tightly controlled by stakeholders; consequently, privacy is a major concern when federating queries over such datasets. In the Healthcare and Life Sciences (HCLS) domain real-world datasets contain sensitive statistical information: strict ownership is granted to individuals working in hospitals, research labs, clinical trial organisers, etc. Therefore, the legal and ethical concerns on (i) preserving the anonymity of patients (or clinical subjects); and (ii) respecting data ownership through access control; are key challenges faced by the data analytics community working within the HCLS domain. Likewise statistical data play a key role in the domain, where the RDF Data Cube Vocabulary has been proposed as a standard format to enable the exchange of such data. However, to the best of our knowledge, no existing approach has looked to optimise federated queries over such statistical data. RESULTS: We present SAFE: a query federation engine that enables policy-aware access to sensitive statistical datasets represented as RDF data cubes. SAFE is designed specifically to query statistical RDF data cubes in a distributed setting, where access control is coupled with source selection, user profiles and their access rights. SAFE proposes a join-aware source selection method that avoids wasteful requests to irrelevant and unauthorised data sources. In order to preserve anonymity and enforce stricter access control, SAFE's indexing system does not hold any data instances-it stores only predicates and endpoints. The resulting data summary has a significantly lower index generation time and size compared to existing engines, which allows for faster updates when sources change. CONCLUSIONS: We validate the performance of the system with experiments over real-world datasets provided by three clinical organisations as well as legacy linked datasets. We show that SAFE enables granular graph-level access control over distributed clinical RDF data cubes and efficiently reduces the source selection and overall query execution time when compared with general-purpose SPARQL query federation engines in the targeted setting.

PHTLS ® (Prehospital Trauma Life Support) provider courses in Germany - who takes part and what do participants think about prehospital trauma care training?

BACKGROUND: The goal of this study was to examine PHTLS Provider courses in Germany and to proof the assumption that formation of physicians and paramedics in prehospital trauma care can be optimized. METHODS: PHTLS participants were asked to fill out standardized questionnaires during their course preparation and directly after the course. There were some open questions regarding their professional background and closed questions concerning PHTLS itself. Further questions were to be answered on an analog scale in order to quantify subjective impressions of confidence, knowledge and also to describe individual levels of education and training. RESULTS: 247 questionnaires could be analyzed. Physicians noted significant (p < 0.001) more deficits in their professional training than paramedics. 80% of the paramedics affirmed to have had adequate training with respect to prehospital trauma care, all physicians claimed not to have had sufficient training for prehospital trauma care situations at Medical School. Physicians were statistically most significant dissatisfied then paramedics (p < 0.001). While most participants gave positive feedback, anesthetists were less convinced of PHTLS (p = 0.005), didn't benefit as much as the rest (p = 0.004) and stated more often, that the course was of less value for their daily work (p = 0.03). After the course confidence increased remarkably and reached higher rates than before the course (p < 0.001). After PHTLS both groups showed similar ratings concerning the course concept indicating that PHTLS could equalize some training deficits and help to gain confidence and assurance in prehospital trauma situations. 90% of the paramedics and 100% of the physicians would recommend PHTLS. Physicians and especially anesthetists revised their opinions with regard to providing PHTLS at Medical School after having taken part in a PHTLS course. CONCLUSION: The evaluation of PHTLS courses in Germany indicates the necessity for special prehospital trauma care training. Paramedics and physicians criticize deficits in their professional training, which can be compensated by PHTLS. With respect to relevant items like confidence and knowledge PHTLS leads to a statistically significant increase in ratings on a visual analogue scale. PHTLS should be integrated into the curriculum at Medical School.

Osteomyelitis.

INTRODUCTION: Osteomyelitis is a challenging diagnosis for every patient because of its protracted treatment process. Very experienced orthopaedic surgeons are needed to diagnose and treat this bacteria-related severe disorder in a right and proper way. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Different treatment options are possible for osteomyelitis at any stage: antibiotics in the acute and chronic stage for conservative treatment or radical debridement, bone fenestration, reaming, bone troughing, the Masquelet-technique, segmental resection with callus distraction, bone grafting and even amputation as surgical therapy. RESULTS: Depending on different stages of the disease, there are good results with every technique available-on condition that radical debridement was performed. The complication rate is remarkable so that soft tissue defects should be assessed by using flaps to close the wounds in early stages. CONCLUSIONS: The treatment of osteomyelitis should be done in centres with expertise in the treatment of this challenging disease. Different methods should be offered by surgeons and individual treatment concepts acquired together with the patient. The treatment of complications like soft tissue defects should be provided in the same centre and performed in short time lag to the prior surgery. The cooperation of the patient and surgeons of different specialities is mandatory in these cases.

Time course of 25(OH)D3 vitamin D3 as well as PTH (parathyroid hormone) during fracture healing of patients with normal and low bone mineral density (BMD).

BACKGROUND: Until now the exact biochemical processes during healing of metaphyseal fractures of healthy and osteoporotic bone remain unclear. Especially the physiological time courses of 25(OH)D(3) (Vitamin D) as well as PTH (Parathyroid Hormone) the most important modulators of calcium and bone homeostasis are not yet examined sufficiently. The purpose of this study was to focus on the time course of these parameters during fracture healing. METHODS: In the presented study, we analyse the time course of 25(OH)D3 and PTH during fracture healing of low BMD level fractures versus normal BMD level fractures in a matched pair analysis. Between March 2007 and February 2009 30 patients older than 50 years of age who had suffered a metaphyseal fracture of the proximal humerus, the distal radius or the proximal femur were included in our study. Osteoporosis was verified by DEXA measuring. The time courses of 25(OH)D(3) and PTH were examined over an eight week period. Friedmann test, the Wilcoxon signed rank test and the Mann-Withney U test were used as post-hoc tests. A p-value ≤ 0.05 was considered significant. RESULTS: Serum levels of 25(OH)D(3) showed no differences in both groups. In the first phase of fracture healing PTH levels in the low BMD level group remained below those of the normal BMD group in absolute figures. Over all no significant differences between low BMD level bone and normal BMD level bone could be detected in our study. CONCLUSIONS: The time course of 25(OH)D(3) and PTH during fracture healing of patients with normal and low bone mineral density were examined for the first time in humans in this setting and allowing molecular biological insights into fracture healing in metaphyseal bones on a molecural level. There were no significant differences between patients with normal and low BMD levels. Hence further studies will be necessary to obtain more detailed insight into fracture healing in order to provide reliable decision criteria for therapy and the monitoring of fracture healing.

Balance control in sitting and standing in children and young adults with benign cerebellar tumors.

Children and young adolescents with chronic surgical cerebellar lesions show persistent balance control problems during standing when lesions affect the deep cerebellar fastigial and adjacent interposed nuclei. The purpose of this study is to confirm that the same lesion sites are also associated with permanent signs of trunkal ataxia during sitting. A second aim is to demonstrate that examining the postural control of patients while sitting or standing on a foam cushion may constitute a simple clinical exam yielding results commensurate to a more involved dynamic posturography exam. Balance control was assessed in 16 patients after surgery of a benign cerebellar tumor in chronic state and healthy age- and gender-matched control subjects. Using an ultrasound-based kinematic recording system, trunkal and shoulder sway was measured during sitting and standing in different conditions. High-resolution MRI scans were acquired in the cerebellar patients. Voxel-wise statistical lesion symptom mapping was performed to compare lesioned areas between affected and unaffected patients in a given condition using χ² tests. During sitting, 56% of cerebellar patients exhibited trunkal sway outside the range of healthy controls, and 87.5% of cerebellar patients revealed abnormal sway patterns during standing. Abnormalities were most pronounced when visual information was absent, and somatosensory information became unreliable and/or when the base of support along the medio-lateral axis was minimized during tandem stance. Lesion symptom mapping revealed that pathological values in the behavior data were more likely in patients with surgical lesions involving the fastigial nuclei (NF) and adjacent interposed nuclei (NI). In patients with surgery <1-year lesions of the inferior cerebellar vermis also had an impact on balance function. Our results corroborate previous evidence that the extent of permanent damage to the deep cerebellar nuclei greatly impacts on the recovery on balance function.