Response to the letter to editor: 'A multi-body modelling approach to determine load sharing between the passive elements of the lumbar spine'

摘要

We appreciate the author(s)' letter to editor for the discussion and the series of interesting questions that were posed. It is an inevitable fact that a model is bounded by inputs described to it in the form of material properties, boundary conditions and constraints. These series of inputs dictate the response of the system that is modelled. Therefore, particular attention must be given to all aforementioned input properties, if a realistic result is to be obtained. As in any modelling approach, we were faced with a series of contradicting reports in the literature that affect the outcome of the model. However, we have relied on the mainstream publications that many previous authors have already cited in their studies. The first issue the authors have brought up is that the study of porcine spinal ligaments has shown that those ligaments close to the vertebrae (ALL and PLL) have no attachment sites on the bony elements.