Hundreds of thousands of revision surgeries for hip, knee, and shoulder joint arthroplasties are now performed worldwide annually. Partial removal of hardware during some types of revision surgeries may create significant amounts of third body metal, polymer, or bone cement debris. Retained debris may lead to a variety of negative health effects including damage to the joint replacement. We des...

A retrospective analysis of 13 patients who underwent endoscopic hardware removal to resolve residual foraminal stenosis issues was performed to determine the feasibility and validity of utilizing endoscopic techniques to entirely remove spinal hardware. Tubular retractors were utilized for the procedure with a diameter of 15 to 18 mm. Surgical times ranged from 58 to 268 minutes, with the larg...

It is uncommon for femoral neck fractures to occur after proximal femoral hardware removal because age, osteoporosis, and technical error are often noted as the causes for this type of fracture. However, excessive alcohol consumption and failure to comply with protected weight bearing for 6 weeks increases the risk of femoral neck fractures.This article describes a case of a 57-year-old man wit...

BACKGROUND Hardware removals are among the most commonly performed surgical procedures worldwide. Current literature offers little data concerning postoperative patient satisfaction. The purpose of our study was to evaluate the patients' point of view on implant removal. METHODS We surveyed patients of a German level one trauma center, who underwent hardware removal in 2009 and 2010, with reg...

BACKGROUND Tibial fractures are the most common long bone fracture. The standard of care for the treatment of diaphyseal tibial fractures is an intramedullary nail (IMN). Implant removal is one of the most common procedures in bone and joint surgery, and criteria for implant removal are typically left to the treating surgeon. Currently, no clear criteria exist to guide a surgeon's decision to r...

INTRODUCTION Fracture fixation has become advanced with the advent of new and custom metal implants for each type of bone/fracture. After union though, the implant ceases to be important and may be removed. Routine removal is advocated by some and opposed by others. Nevertheless, some patients require removal of the hardware because of various implant-related problems. Our study was aimed at id...

This paper demonstrates a real-time, full-3D edge tracker based on a particle filter. In contrast to previous methods this system is capable of tracking complex self-occluding three-dimensional structures. The system exploits graphics hardware in a novel manner, allowing it not only to perform hidden line removal for each particle but also to evaluate pose likelihoods directly on the graphics c...