In this article, published in Orthopaedic Product News in January 2018, Mr Ian McDermott discusses the success rates of knee replacement surgery and how to best judge ‘survivorship’ of the prosthesis.
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3D-printed custom-made patient specific jigs from Conformis shown to give the most accurate alignment possible.
“Accuracy of Coronal Plane Mechanical Alignment in a Customized, Individually Made Total Knee Replacement with Patient-Specific Instrumentation.”
Levengood and Dupee
Journal of Knee Surgery 2018; 31(8): 792-796
Researchers from Georgia, U.S.A, examined the alignment and accuracy of placement of knee replacement prostheses using 3D-printed patient-specific cutting jigs to implant Conformis custom-made knee replacements. The authors showed that ‘perfect’ alignment was achieved in 53 out of 63 knees studied, with the remaining 10 patients having alignment within ±2° of perfect. The authors highlight that these results are as good if not better than the best results published using CAS (computer-assisted surgery), such as ‘computer navigation’.
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Ian McDermott publishes article in The Huffington Post on 3D-printing and custom-made knees.
On 26th April 2017 Mr Ian McDermott published an article in the Huffington Post titled: “The Future Of Joint Replacement Lies In 3D Printing.”
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Conformis iTotal-PS custom-made knees give better knee kinematics compared to an off-the-shelf prosthesis.
Dr William Kurtz, MD, Chief of Orthopedics at St Thomas Hospital in Nashville, presents the findings of his teams research at the 2017 British Association for Surgery of the Knee (BASK) Annual Meeting, showing improved post-operative knee kinematics with the Conformis iTotal-PS custom-made knee compared to a standard off-the-shelf prosthesis.
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Posteriorly-stabilised custom-made knee replacements now available for patients with severe deformities.
In May 2016 Mr Ian McDermott implanted the first iTotal-PS knee prosthesis in the UK, which is Conformis’s ‘posteriorly-stabilised’ version of their iTotal knee. This prosthesis allows for more major corrections of more deformed or unstable arthritic knees, whilst providing additional stability from the implant itself.
The PS design does remove slightly more bone that Conformis’s regular CR (cruciate-retaining) version, but the benefit is that the PS version has an additional post on the tibial polyethylene insert that engages with a metal bar within the femoral prosthesis, giving greater stability to the implant, allowing better outcomes in more severely damaged and more challenging joints.
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