Highlights
- •The effect of antibiotic soaking on tendon sub-failure material properties is unknown.
- •Tensile tests with short-term soaking times and with or without antibiotics.
- •Elastic modulus, toe-region length, and transition stress evaluated.
- •Short term soaking time (30 min or less) did not affect material properties.
- •Soaking solution (saline or saline and antibiotics) did not affect properties.
Abstract
Background
Allograft tendons are commonly used during orthopedic surgery to reconstruct tissue
that is severely damaged. Soaking the tendon in an antibiotic solution, specifically
vancomycin, has been shown to lower the risk of post-operative infections. While some
material properties of tendon and ligament after antibiotic soaking have previously
been characterized, extensive sub-failure allograft tendon material properties after
soaking in antibiotic solutions have not.
Methods
Forty tendons were dissected from rabbits and soaked in either a phosphate buffered
saline (PBS) only solution or vancomycin and PBS solution for five or 30 min. Immediately
after soaking, quasi-static tensile experiments were performed in a materials testing
system.
Findings
Tissue nominal stress, Lagrange strain, toe-region properties and elastic modulus
were characterized. For all forty tendons, the average elastic modulus was found to
be 455 ± 37 MPa, the average transition strain (from toe-region to linear elastic
region) was 0.0487 ± 0.0035, and the average transition stress was 9.71 ± 0.79 MPa.
No statistically significant differences in any of these material properties were
found across soaking medium or soaking time.
Interpretation
From these results, we conclude that soaking an allograft tendon in antibiotic solution
for up to 30 min prior to implantation does not change the tensile material properties
of tendons, supporting current clinical practice.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: January 04, 2023
Accepted:
January 3,
2023
Received:
October 17,
2022
Identification
Copyright
© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
