Bone metastases may lead to spine instability and increase the risk of fracture.
A novel biomechanical approach was used to evaluate the effect of lesion type, size, and location on the mechanical competence of the metastatic vertebra.
Vertebrae with metastases were collected from a donation programme. The size and position of the metastases were evaluated. The vertebrae were tested in different loading conditions and the strain distribution was measured with Digital Image Correlation.
The metastatic type characterizes the vertebral behaviour. Once the position of the lytic lesion with respect to the loading direction was taken into account, the size of the lesion was significantly correlated with the perturbation to the strain distribution.
These results highlight the relevance of the size and location of the lytic lesion in driving the spinal biomechanical instability.
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