Sacroiliac joint fixation and fusion implants
AssigneeGlobus Medical, Inc.
InventorsDavid Peretz, Robert Choh Fleming, Weston Carpenter, Andrew Fluck, Caelan Allen
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Bone implants, assemblies, and methods thereof. The implants may include a tulip head and a bone fastener including a screw shank with bone threads, a distal tip configured to facilitate insertion into bone, and a proximal end having a screw head receivable in the tulip head. The screw shank may define one or more longitudinal windows and/or helical cuts filled with a lattice structure that acts as a scaffold for bone healing and bone interdigitation. The bone fastener, or a portion thereof, may be 3D printed, for example, using an additive laser powder bed fusion process to provide the integrated lattice structure.
Claims7
A manufacturing process comprising:
- applying a layer of fine metal powder to a build plate of a three-dimensional printing machine and selectively sintering metal in prescribed locations to create a layer of a screw part blank;
- and
- consecutively adding and sintering layers of fine metal power to prior layers to build up the screw part blank, wherein the screw part blank includes a screw shank with solid and lattice portions, the solid portion includes the bone threads, and the lattice portions fill first and second longitudinal transverse windows and a helical cut about a periphery of the screw shank, wherein the first and second longitudinal transverse windows are staggered and shifted longitudinally and rotationally relative to one another, and the helical cut does not align with a helical path of the bone threads, thereby interrupting some of the bone threads where the paths intersect.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.