Expandable Spinal Interbody Device with Pivoting Linkages
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current spinal interbody devices face challenges in engaging sufficient vertebral surface area to prevent subsidence and maintaining minimal size and weight while ensuring strength, especially in spinal fusion surgeries like ALIF, where smaller devices are preferred to minimize tissue disruption.
Innovation Solution
A radially expandable spinal interbody device with arced, pivoting linkages that can transform from a collapsed to an expanded state, mimicking vertebral anatomy, featuring locking mechanisms to prevent overextension, and made from biocompatible materials like titanium or stainless steel, accompanied by a surgical tool for deployment and bone graft introduction.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the interbody device is made larger to engage more vertebral surface area, then subsidence resistance is improved, but device size and weight increase
Solution Approach 1:
The interbody device employs an expandable structure that transitions from a compressed delivery state to an expanded deployed state. The device includes a body with a lumen that can be radially expanded to increase surface area engagement with vertebrae, thereby improving subsidence resistance without requiring a permanently large device structure. This dynamic transformation allows the device to achieve high reliability only when needed at the implantation site.
Solution Approach 2:
The device utilizes a nested configuration where the expandable body structure is contained within a delivery system in a compressed state. The body can be radially expanded from within the delivery system, allowing the device to be delivered in a compact form and then deployed to a larger functional size. This nesting principle enables the device to engage sufficient vertebral surface area while maintaining minimal size for minimally invasive delivery.
2Reliability
If the interbody device is made larger to engage more vertebral surface area, then subsidence resistance is improved, but tissue disruption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The device transforms from a compressed state during delivery to an expanded state at the implantation site. This dynamic expansion allows the device to maintain a compact profile during minimally invasive delivery through small incisions, thereby minimizing tissue disruption. Once deployed, the device expands to engage sufficient vertebral surface area for reliable subsidence resistance, achieving both minimal tissue disruption and high reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The expandable body is delivered in a nested, compressed configuration within a delivery system. This nested state enables passage through small incisions and minimal access pathways, reducing tissue disruption. After deployment, the body radially expands to achieve the necessary size for engaging vertebral surface area, thereby resolving the contradiction between minimal tissue disruption and sufficient subsidence resistance.
3Object-affected harmful factors
If the interbody device is made smaller for minimally invasive procedures, then tissue disruption is reduced, but subsidence resistance decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The device is designed with dynamic expandability, allowing it to transition from a small compressed delivery state to a large expanded functional state. During delivery through minimally invasive pathways, the device maintains a small profile that causes minimal tissue disruption. At the implantation site, the device is expanded radially to increase surface area engagement with vertebrae, thereby achieving sufficient subsidence resistance despite the initial small size.
Solution Approach 2:
The device utilizes a nested configuration where the expandable body is contained within a delivery system in a compressed state, enabling minimally invasive delivery through small incisions with minimal tissue disruption. Once deployed, the body expands radially from the nested state to achieve sufficient size for engaging vertebral surface area and providing subsidence resistance, effectively resolving the contradiction between small delivery size and large functional size.
Data Source
AI summary
A radially expandable spinal interbody device for implantation between adjacent vertebrae of a spine is deliverable to an implant area in a radially collapsed state having minimum radial dimensions and once positioned is then radially expandable through and up to maximum radial dimensions. The expanded radially expandable spinal interbody device is configured to closely mimic the anatomical configuration of a vertebral face. The radially expandable spinal interbody device is formed of arced, pivoting linkages that allow transfiguration from the radially collapsed minimum radial dimensions through and up to the radially expanded maximum radial dimensions once deployed at the implant site (i.e. between adjacent vertebrae). The pivoting linkages have ends with locking features that inhibit or prevent overextension of the linkages. In one form of the locking features, one end of the linkage includes lobes that form a pocket while the other end of the linkage includes a projection that is adapted to be received in the pocket of the lobes of an adjacent linkage. A kit is also provided including a tool for the implantation and deployment of the spinal interbody device into an intervertebral space.