What are the General Principles of Plate Fixation?

The health of the bone is a factor which is often overlooked while fixing a fracture. A young bone is dense in consistency and a screw holds good in such a bone. As the holding power of a screw is dependent on the elastic force offered by the bone, it’s obvious that the denser the bone, the stronger the hold. In the elderly people, the bone is porotic, being less dense than young bone. The holding elasticity of porotic bone is a lower magnitude as well as leads to inferior screw hold. Therefore, the mechanical properties of bone and health are of importance in this context.

The bone’s interaction and the plate are important, since the 2 are combined in a composite structure that becomes a vital entity in the strength of a fixation. The strength of a plate-bone construct is its capability to withstand load without structural failure. This entity may be described as a torsional strength or a bending strength, depending on the load application. An orthopedic plate is a load sharing device. Loads may be transmitted between plate as well as bone through the bone screws and through friction kind of forces between the plate surface and the bone. Some of the load is supported by the plate and some load passes between the fragments of bone. The reconstructed bone must support a certain load.

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