ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,310,635, issued on May 27, was assigned to Iowa State University Research Foundation Inc. (Ames, Iowa).
"Tunable stiffness bone rod" was invented by Azadeh Sheidaei (Ames, Iowa), Mohammad Saber Hashemi (Ames, Iowa) and Karl Kraus (Ames, Iowa).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A tunable stiffness bone rod promotes the healing of fractured bones, such as tibia bones. The tunable stiffness bone rod includes a hexagonal shape that has variable levels of stiffness upon application of an axial force. The axial force will begin a low stiffness movement of the bone rod until a threshold is met. Upon reaching the threshold, the stiffness of the bone ...