Suture anchors provide a quick, secure, and simple means of surgically attaching soft tissue to bone. Since their introduction in 1985, suture anchors have been widely used in a variety of procedures. They provide a significant savings in time and cost to both surgeon and patient. However, there are a number of shortcomings with current anchors. Existing suture anchors perform poorly in osteoporotic bone and cannot be repositioned easily following implantation. The issue of attachment to osteoporotic bone will become increasingly important with a growing active adult population. We propose the development of a novel, new suture anchor that possesses the same benefits of existing devices but yields significant advantages. The new anchor is less invasive, can be readily repositioned, provides exceptional performance in poor quality bone, and can be used as a revision device for other anchors. The development of this anchor combines finite element analysis and bench testing to determine the optimum anchor structure. The selected prototype anchor design will be tested against leading suture anchor products. The testing regimen includes static and cyclic pullout tests in healthy and poor quality synthetic bone models. The repositioning effect on fixation strength will also be investigated for these anchors.
Surgeries involving attachment of ligament or tendon to bone Ex. rotator cuff, SLAP lesion, Bankart repairs.
