Development of a knee joint motion simulator to evaluate deep knee flexion of artificial knee joints.

A purpose of this study is to examine the effect that quadriceps femoris force gives to rotation angle and joint reaction force of total knee prosthesis during deep knee flexion such as a unique sitting style called 'seiza' in Japanese. For the evaluation, we developed the knee motion simulator which could bend to 180 degrees continually simulating the passive flexion performed by clinicians. A total knee prosthesis, which is a specially-devised posterior stabilized type and capable of flexion up to 180 degrees, was inserted into bone model. And this prosthesis pulled by three kinds of quadriceps femoris forces to perform parameter study. The results obtained in this study were showed the same tendency with those in the past cadaveric experiment. It is suggested that the rotation angle and joint reaction force of total knee prosthesis are affected by shape of prosthesis, a vector of quadriceps femoris force, and bony aliments during deep knee flexion.