Biomedical Research

Introduction: Doctors have to give up surgery for patients with moderate to severe pectus excavatum with scoliosis in clinic. In the experimental study of Nuss procedure, it is not only unable to conduct the experiment in vivo, but also cannot get the cadaver of pectus excavatum with scoliosis. Therefore, the calculation method and the result of the finite element model in the numerical simulation still lack of the experimental verification.

Methods: According to the result of numerical simulation, the electrometric measurement, experiment was conducted on an artificial thoracic model which was created by 3D printing technology. By referring to comparison of the experimental and numerical simulation results, the calculation model was modified to improve the accuracy of numerical simulation.

Results: According to the experimental data, the sunken sternum was raised up 40 mm; the Cobb angle of the scoliosis was reduced from 20º to 15.8º, the results of electrometric measurement experiment were basically consistent with those of the numerical simulation and clinic.

Conclusions: This study revealed the strain distribution rules in the view of experiment, and provides a reliable verification method for numerical simulation of the correction of pectus excavatum with scoliosisas well as a reference to optimize the Nuss procedures, to improve the success rate of surgery and to reduce the risk of surgery. With the application of 3D print technology, the limitation of the ethnics and difficulty in producing artificial thoracic model can be overcome.

Author(s): Jin-Duo Ye, Yong-Wei Hou, Wei-Hong Zhong, Ji-Fu Liu, Chun-Qiu Zhang
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