On the Failure Initiation in the Proximal Human Femur Under Simulated Sideways Fall

The limitations of areal bone mineral density measurements for identifying at-risk individuals have led to the development of alternative screening methods for hip fracture risk including the use of geometrical measurements from the proximal femur and subject specific finite element analysis (FEA) for predicting femoral strength, based on quantitative CT data (qCT). However, these methods need more development to gain widespread clinical applications. This study had three aims: To investigate whether proximal femur geometrical parameters correlate with obtained femur peak force during the impact testing; to examine whether or not failure of the proximal femur initiates in the cancellous (trabecular) bone; and finally, to examine whether or not surface fracture initiates in the places where holes perforate the cortex of the proximal femur. We found that cortical thickness around the trochanteric-fossa is significantly correlated to the peak force obtained from simulated sideways falling (R² = 0.69) more so than femoral neck cortical thickness (R² = 0.15). Dynamic macro level FE simulations predicted that fracture generally initiates in the cancellous bone compartments. Moreover, our micro level FEA results indicated that surface holes may be involved in primary failure events.