The use of uncemented humeral stems in total shoulder arthroplasty (TSA) is associated with stress shielding. Shorter length stems have shown to decrease stress shielding; however, the effect of stem varus-valgus alignment is currently not known. The purpose of this study was to quantify the effect of short stem distal humeral endosteal contact due to varus-valgus angulation on bone stresses after TSA. Three-dimensional models of eight male cadaveric humeri were constructed from computed tomography data. Bone models were reconstructed with a short stem humeral component implant in three positions (standard, varus, and valgus).Modeling was performed at 45°and 75°of abduction and the resulting differentials in bone stress compared to the intact state and the expected time-zero bone response were determined. In cortical and trabecular bone, the standard position (STD) altered bone stress less than the valgus (VAL) and varus (VAR) positions relative to the intact state. For both cortical (p = 0.033) and trabecular (p = 0.012) bone, the VAL position produced a larger volume of bone with resorbing potential compared to the STD position.

Stress shielding of the proximal humerus following total shoulder arthroplasty (TSA) can promote unfavorable bone remodeling, especially for osteoporotic patients. The objective of this finite element (FE) study was to determine if a hollow, rather than solid, titanium stem can mitigate this effect for healthy, osteopenic, and osteoporotic bone. Using a population-based model of the humerus, representative average healthy, osteopenic, and osteoporotic humerus FE models were created. For each model, changes in bone and implant stresses following TSA were evaluated for different loading scenarios and compared between solid versus hollow-stemmed implants. For cortical bone, using an implant decreased von Mises stress with respect to intact values up to 34.4%, with a more pronounced effect at more proximal slices. In the most proximal slice, based on changes in strain energy density, hollow-stemmed implants outperformed solid-stemmed ones through reducing cortical bone volume with resorption potential by 11.7% ± 2.1% (p = .01). For cortical bone in this slice, the percentage of bone with resorption potential for the osteoporotic bone was greater than the healthy bone by 8.0% ± 1.4% using the hollow-stemmed implant (p = .04). These results suggest a small improvement in boneimplant mechanics using hollow-stemmed humeral implants and indicate osteoporosis could exacerbate stress shielding to some extent. The hollow stems maintained adequate strength and using even thinner walls may further reduce stress shielding. After further developing these models, future studies could yield optimized implant designs tuned for varying bone qualities.

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