Article preview from IN VIVO - June 1, 2011
OrthoSensor is trying to bring a data-driven revolution to orthopedics. It is building a three-legged platform, with intelligent instruments, intelligent implants, and analytics, all driven by sensor and other micro-electronics technology that feed back to surgeons vital data both intra- and post-operatively.
Article preview from IN VIVO - June 1, 2011
It would be misleading to say that orthopedic surgeons, up to their elbows in blood and bone, don't really know what they're doing when they replace someone's knee or hip. But it is notable, for all the success of today's implant procedures, how much surgeons don't know. Working largely by feel and experience, surgeons position and place implants hoping that they've done so just right, since failure to do so can lead to some pretty serious complications, including severe pain for the patient and the need to do a costly revision procedure sooner rather than later.
Yet for all of the cost and concern of such failures, until recently, we've had little real information on why implants fail and have spent little effort to try to reduce failures. This problem has been made worse by the fact that technology development in orthopedics has focused largely on improving the implant – a game of diminishing returns given the high immediate post-operative success of total joint replacement. In short, the high procedural success rates realized in the first year or so after surgery has lulled everyone – surgeons, implant manufacturers, hospitals, and even payers and employers – into a false sense of security about long-term procedural success rates and led device designers down a narrowing path of ever more incremental implant enhancements.
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