Properties and Behaviour of Distal Femur to Axial Loading in Osteochondral Autologous Transplantation

The autologous osteochondral transplantation is a procedure which transfers osteochondral plugs harvested from a nonweight bearing area of the knee in the area of the chondral defect. The purpose of this study is to analyse the behaviour at compression of a bovine femur from whose trochlea were harvested osteochondral plugs. It has been used a bovine femur with 8 osteochondral plugs harvested from the trochlea. The prepared femur was positioned at the Instron 5587 Machine, then loaded with forces up to 5.000 N, with concomitant aquisition of data with the Aramis 2M System. The acquired data allow the analysis of the principal deformations and tensions at different pressure levels. The values obtained shows that harvesting the osteochondral plugs from the femoral trochlea does not modify the biomechanical behaviour of the femur. Then, It has been realised a transverse section at the trochlear articular surface, allowing the analysis of the behaviour on compression of all points of this section. The resulting diagrams shows linear strains and displacements, without the existence of peaks due to donor tunnels. The results shows that at compression there are no higher tensions, strains or displacements on the distal femur dues to the harvesting of the osteochondral plugs.