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Electrical Stimulation of Spinal Fusions

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Spinal Fusion

Abstract

The ability of bone to respond to changes in the mechanical loads to which it is subjected led, in 1892, to the formulation of Wolff’s law by the anatomist Julius Wolff. “The form of the bone being given, the bone elements place or displace themselves in the direction of the functional pressure, and increase or decrease their mass to reflect the amount of functional pressure.” Bone not only alters its orientation in response to mechanical stress but also gains or loses substance.1 Simply put, the internal architecture of bone is an expression of the external forces acting upon it. How this transduction of mechanical energy to a biological response occurs is imperfectly understood; it is hypothesized that through a negative feedback system the mechanical force effects a change in the crystalline systems of bone, and because bone is piezoelectric—which means that it generates an electric current when it is mechanically deformed—it was suggested that the electric signal was a component of the feedback loop.2,3

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Authors
  1. William J. Kane
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, 19107, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Jerome M. Cotler M.D. (Professor and Vice Chairman) (Professor and Vice Chairman)

  2. Division of Orthopaedic Surgery, The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, Houston, TX, 77030, USA

    Howard B. Cotler M.D. (Assistant Professor of Surgery) (Assistant Professor of Surgery)

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© 1990 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

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Kane, W.J. (1990). Electrical Stimulation of Spinal Fusions. In: Cotler, J.M., Cotler, H.B. (eds) Spinal Fusion. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3272-8_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3272-8_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-7944-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-3272-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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