Modular Pin Guide for Spinal Implant Alignment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current spinal surgery techniques face challenges in consistently placing pins in vertebrae and aligning intervertebral implants due to reliance on surgeon skill and experience, leading to inconsistent positioning and potential injury from over-distracting vertebral bodies.
Innovation Solution
The development of modular pin guides and methods that include a spacer component and guide component with parallel guide tubes to ensure precise placement of pins midline to the spine, and instruments for inserting and aligning intervertebral implants, providing reliable and reproducible alignment and sizing information.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If pins are placed by hand based on landmark features and surgeon experience, then the procedure is simple and quick, but the positioning and alignment of pins are inconsistent and unreliable
Solution Approach 1:
A guide instrument is introduced as an intermediary tool between the surgeon and the vertebrae. The guide includes guide tubes that define precise trajectories for pin insertion, acting as a mediator that translates surgical intent into accurate physical placement. This intermediary device ensures consistent pin positioning and alignment without requiring advanced surgical skill, directly resolving the contradiction between reliability and device complexity.
2Ease of operation
If vertebral bodies are distracted beyond a certain degree to enable implant placement, then the implant can be inserted, but injury to the patient occurs
Solution Approach 1:
The guide instrument is positioned and pinned to the vertebral bodies before the actual distraction and implant insertion procedures. This preliminary action creates a stable reference framework that defines safe distraction limits and precise implant trajectories. By establishing these guides in advance, the surgeon can proceed with implant placement without excessive distraction, thereby reducing patient injury risk while maintaining ease of operation.
3Manufacturing precision
If pins are positioned using trial and error to achieve desired alignment, then the final alignment may be correct, but the procedure time increases and productivity decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The guide instrument with pre-defined guide tubes is positioned and secured to the vertebrae before pin insertion. This preliminary setup establishes the correct pin trajectories in advance, eliminating the need for trial and error adjustments during the pinning procedure. The guide tubes physically constrain pin insertion paths, ensuring precise alignment from the first attempt, thereby maintaining high productivity while achieving superior alignment precision.
4Force
If multiple pins are inserted to distract vertebrae for implant placement, then the distraction force is sufficient, but the alignment of pins with each other and with the spine midline is inconsistent
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple guide tubes are integrated into a single guide instrument that is positioned as one unit relative to the spine midline and vertebral anatomy. This merging of multiple pin placement functions into a single reference framework ensures that all pins are aligned consistently with each other and with the spinal midline. The unified guide structure maintains proper pin spacing and orientation while distributing the distraction force across multiple pins, resolving the contradiction between force application and alignment consistency.
Data Source
AI summary
The present invention includes pin guides and methods for placing pins in adjacent vertebrae. The present invention also includes methods for placing pins in adjacent vertebrae using the pin guides described herein. The present invention also includes an intervertebral implant insertion and alignment instrument, a distraction instrument, an intervertebral implant insertion guide, and methods for inserting an implant into an intervertebral space. Despite existing tools and techniques, present positioning of implants in intervertebral spaces and pins in adjacent vertebrae often depend on a surgeon's skill, experience and technique. Practice of the present invention can aide in the placement of an implant into an intervertebral space and placement of pins in adjacent vertebrae, e.g., midline to the coronal plane spine and/or parallel to vertebral endplates that abut the intervertebral space.