Influence of muscle loading on early-stage bone fracture healing

Designing weight-bearing exercises for patients with lower-limb bone fractures is challenging and requires a systematic approach that accounts for patient-specific loading conditions. However, ‘trial-and-error’ approaches are commonplace in clinical settings due to the lack of a fundamental understanding of the effect of weight-bearing exercises on the bone healing process. Whilst computational modelling has the potential to assist clinicians in designing effective patient-specific weight-bearing exercises, current models do not explicitly account for the effects of muscle loading, which could play an important role in mediating the mechanical microenvironment of a fracture site. We combined a fracture healing model involving a tibial fracture stabilised with a locking compression plate (LCP) with a detailed musculoskeletal model of the lower limb to determine interfragmentary strains in the vicinity of the fracture site during both full weight-bearing (100% body weight) and partial weight-bearing (50% body weight) standing. We found that muscle loading significantly altered model predictions of interfragmentary strains. For a fractured bone with a standard LCP configuration (bone-plate distance = 2 mm, working length = 30 mm) subject to full weight-bearing, the predicted strains at the near and far cortices were 23% and 11% higher when muscle loading was included compared to the case when muscle loading was omitted. The knee and ankle muscles accounted for 38% of the contact force exerted at the knee joint during quiet standing and contributed significantly to the strains calculated at the fracture site. Thus, models of bone fracture healing ought to account explicitly for the effects of muscle loading. Furthermore, the study indicated that LCP configuration parameters play a crucial role in influencing the fracture site microenvironment. The results highlighted the dominance of working length over bone-plate distance in controlling the flexibility of fracture sites stabilised with LCP devices.