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Osteochondral transplant system

Design Award

  • Design Excellence Award Honorable Mention

Project Overview

Osteochondral allograft transplantation is an increasingly popular procedure that repairs osteochondral defects by introducing mature cartilage and subchondral bone to facilitate defect healing. These defects can arise from trauma, osteonecrosis, osteoarthritis, and other degenerative cartilage disorders. Existing surgical systems are detrimental to chondrocyte viability and limit vertical graft adjustment, which are both crucial for successful surgical outcomes. To address both challenges, we developed a novel surgical system that creates threads on the graft and receiving site to produce a screw-in graft. Testing revealed a significant improvement in chondrocyte viability with the screw-in graft over the traditional impaction method. However, matching the surface of the graft with the surface of the receiving site was not fully addressed with our current device. Using the threading approach couples graft rotation and translation presenting a unique graft alignment challenge as aligning the graft correctly in the receiving site is important to avoid cartilage incongruencies.

Team Picture

Team members from left to right: Zachary Wodushek, Alexander Teague, Alexander Babinski, David Fiflis
Team members from left to right: Zachary Wodushek, Alexander Teague, Alexander Babinski, David Fiflis

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Contact Information

Team Members

  • Alexander Teague - Team Leader
  • Alexander Babinski - Communicator & BWIG
  • Zachary Wodushek - BSAC
  • David Fiflis - BPAG

Advisor and Client

  • Prof. Tracy Jane Puccinelli - Advisor
  • Dr. Brian Walczak - Client

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