A METHOD FOR MEASURING PRESSURES IN THE LIVER AND SPLEEN OF POST-MORTEM HUMAN SURROGATES DURING FULL-SCALE FRONTAL SLED TESTS

摘要

The liver and spleen are the most frequently injured abdominal organs during motor vehicle collisions. Previous research has correlated internal liver pressure with injury risk. However, these studies were performed on isolated livers ex vivo or in whole-body post-mortem human surrogates (PMHSs), employing a fluoroscopy method to instrument livers in situ. The time and monetary costs associated with fluoroscopy make it challenging for all laboratories and study designs to employ. This results in the need for a more direct, cost effective, and time efficient approach for instrumenting abdominal organs with pressure sensors. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop a method for measuring the internal pressures of the liver and spleen in PMHSs during full-scale frontal sled tests, and evaluate its efficacy by comparing measured pressures to literature values. Pressure sensors were directly routed into the hepatic and splenic arteries of six PMHSs. Each PMHS then underwent a full-scale frontal sled test (△V = 35 mph) involving possible loading from the steering wheel, steering wheel airbag, and seatbelt. Three tests featured a foam knee bolster surrogate, and three tests had a foam knee bolster airbag surrogate. An ANOVA was performed to determine whether the collected hepatic pressure data was significantly different from previous literature. Peak pressures ranged from 40.7 to 76.4 kPa for the liver and 34.3 to 105.1 kPa for the spleen. The ANOVA indicated that the hepatic pressures were not significantly different from values in the literature, showing that the proposed methodology resulted in the successful measurement of abdominal organ pressures.