MEDIA SPOTLIGHT: New Bone Screw Design More Durable and Easier to Remove

Jason Sandefur

Editor�s Note: Articles in Media Spotlight are excerpts from publications or broadcasts which show the industry what the public is reading or hearing about fasteners and fastener companies.

Say �fastener� and the word �bone� doesn�t immediately leap to mind.
But two students in Singapore have designed a new bone screw that is turning heads in the medical community, according to the international edition of The Straits Times Weekly.
While studying mechanical engineering at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Desmond Teo Boon Hoe, 27, and Poon Jian Wei, 20, created a screw that is more durable and easier for surgeons to remove from patients.
Current orthopedic practice uses stainless steel screws and plates to bind broken bones while they heal. Frequently, however, these screws break or become difficult to remove.
Straits Times quoted Hoe as summing up the dilemma this way: �Sometimes when a surgeon removes a screw from a bone, the head of the screw breaks away from its neck. When that happens, the surgeon has to bore a bigger hole in the bone to remove the rest of the screw.�
Bigger holes generally lead to longer recovery time.
To come up with their own design, Hoe and Wei strengthened the neck of the screw, which decreases the chance of breaking during removal, according to Straits Times. Other improvements included replacing the traditional hexagon-shaped groove on the screw head with a horizontal groove.
As Straits Times explained, a horizontal groove prevents the screw from �rounding off� or wearing smooth, which makes the screw harder to remove.
Hoe and Wei�s award-winning design was developed over a period of nine months with the help of orthopedic surgeon Yang Kuang Ying from Singapore General Hospital and supervisors from Nanyang Technological University and their own school.
The young engineers won a $5,000 best project award from the Polytechnic Student Research Program in Singapore.
Despite the honor, Hoe and Wei consider their project to be a work in progress, Straits Times stated. Wei told the paper that future engineering students at Ngee Ann Polytechnic will test their design by considering the extra force surgeons use to remove a screw when bone has attached itself during recovery. \ �2002 FastenerNews.com