Activities of Daily Living and Implant Design: Evaluation of a Femoral Fracture Fixed Plate Implant During Bicycle Pedaling

The process of using activities of daily living to evaluate the performance of implantable devices under physiological loading conditions has been researched [1,2,3,4]. In particular, long-term stability of hip-implants, as related to fatigue, have been evaluated using normal walking [1,2,4], sit to stand [1], stair climbing [2,4], and combinations of everyday activities [3]. Current methods that utilize estimated physiological loading conditions are traditionally used as pass/fail tests to identify whether a particular design performs to a set of minimum specifications for long-term use. Such tests are also traditionally limited to a small number of physiologically representative loading conditions (i.e. walking, stair climbing, sit-to-stand).