- Senior Design Spring 2004
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Stevens Institute of Technology
- Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Departments
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Welcome to Grishma's and Dorothy's Senior Design project website! Here, you will find a wealth of information on the process of Distraction Osteogenesis, its applications to the alveolar region, as well as our project design and contribution to this area of medical science.
Introduction and Objective In dentistry, the technique of dental implantation is used to correct tooth loss due to such factors as accidents, periodontal disease and decay. Unfortunately, many patients who could benefit from dental implantation are not candidates for it because they do not have an adequate amount of periodontal bone to support dental implants. To date, a few techniques are utilized in order to work around bone loss; these include bone grafting and the implantation of subperiosteal frameworks for tooth implants or dentures to anchor to. Bone grafting poses drawbacks such as the risk of introducing a patient to disease from foreign bone in the case where the patient’s own bone cannot be transplanted, and subperiosteal implants are not practical in patients who need only one or two dental implants. In the 1950’s Professor Gavril Abramovich Ilizarov conducted research revealing that “controlled mechanically applied tension stress”[1] on fractured bone produces successful regeneration of bone and soft tissue. Today Ilizarov’s Method is called Distraction Osteogenesis. This method has been used extensively to lengthen long bones, correct bone deformities, and to correct maxilofacial abnormalities. More recently, Ilizarov’s Method has been used to solve the problem of periodontal bone deficiency. The NYU Dental School has identified the problem of creating a distraction device to correct periodontal bone deficiency that has the ability to encourage bone growth in any specified direction as applied to the natural angles encountered in human periodontal tissue. This ability would enable oral surgeons to utilize Distraction Osteogenesis in areas of the jaw where the teeth protrude at an angle, such as the positions of the central and lateral incisors. The objective of the senior design project taken on by Grishma Rana and Dorothy White to design a device that will provide a mechanism for bone regeneration utilizing the principles of Distraction Osteogenesis, so that patients who were not previously candidates for dental implantation prior to a distraction procedure, due to insufficient periodontal bone tissue, would now be eligible for dental implants, even in the central and lateral incisor areas of the jaw. Besides serving the purpose of displacing healthy portions of alveolar bone to deficient areas to allow for bone and soft tissue growth in the fracture gap, the distraction device will have the added ability of directing bone regeneration in directions other than only vertically or only laterally.
[1] “Who Was Ilizarov?” http://www.ilizarov.org.uk/biog.htm
Contact Information
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grishma_rana@hotmail.com with
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