Key Laboratory of Spine and Spinal Cord Injury Repair and Regeneration (Tongji University), Ministry of Education, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
Department of Structural Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
Comput Methods Biomech Biomed Engin. 2021 Sep;24(12):1302-1309. doi: 10.1080/10255842.2021.1884232. Epub 2021 Feb 15.
The cervical spine injury is a complicated procedure in the combination of different injury loads and postures. The aim of this study is to investigate the injury mechanism considering different types of cervical curvatures subjected to contusion loads. A finite element model of a cervical spinal cord was constructed. Gray matter, white matter and pia matter were modeled and hyperelastic material properties were assigned. Convergence analysis and validation analysis were carried out. The model was simulated in 3 different spinal curvatures and loaded by 2 directions with 4 compression degrees. The maximum von Mises stress in the whole model was concentrated in the pia matter in all loading cases. When investigating spinal cord injury, the pia matter must be considered. For all three curvatures, the stress in the gray matter and white matter was higher in front-to-back loading condition than that in back-to-front loading condition. The front-to-back impact may cause a larger damage. A back-to-front load damaged the structure around the central canal and a front-to-back contusion load damaged the anterior horn of the spinal cord at most time. From the view of the maximum stress, the lordotic curvature did not show significant buffering effect. However, the pathological curvature had large areas affected and the lordotic curvature showed some benefits to some degree from the view of stress distribution.
颈椎损伤是一种复杂的过程，涉及到不同类型的损伤载荷和姿势。本研究旨在探讨在不同颈椎曲度下，受到挫伤载荷时的损伤机制。构建了一个颈椎脊髓的有限元模型。对灰质、白质和软脑膜进行了建模，并赋予了超弹性材料特性。进行了收敛性分析和验证性分析。该模型在 3 种不同的脊柱曲度下进行了模拟，并在 2 个方向上加载了 4 个压缩程度。在所有加载情况下，整个模型的最大 von Mises 应力集中在软脑膜中。在研究脊髓损伤时，必须考虑软脑膜。对于所有 3 种曲率，在前后加载条件下，灰质和白质的应力比在前后加载条件下高。前后冲击可能会造成更大的损伤。向后加载会损伤中央管周围的结构，而向前冲击挫伤会在大多数时间内损伤脊髓前角。从前部到后部的加载会对灰质和白质产生较大的损伤，而从后部到前部的加载会对脊髓前角产生较大的损伤。从前部到后部的冲击会对灰质和白质产生较大的损伤，而从后部到前部的冲击会对脊髓前角产生较大的损伤。从最大应力的角度来看，前凸曲率并没有表现出显著的缓冲效果。然而，从应力分布的角度来看，病理性曲率有较大的影响区域，前凸曲率在某种程度上有一定的益处。
