Innovations in Orthopedic Implant Development

Dr. Morrey: So one of the questions that I commonly encounter in my practice is which type of implants we're using and what they're made of. And I think patients are made aware of certain problems that have come out with certain implants in the past, we use implants in our practice that have a very long track record with minimal issues. The majority of the implants are fairly standardized throughout the industry, both on the knee side and the hip side. On the knee side, for instance, there are patients that are concerned about metal allergies. And so there are certain patients that I will talk to about metal allergies, even though we are still in an infancy in terms of our understanding of what that truly means. Having said that, we do have alternatives for patients that are really concerned about that. On the hip side, the majority of the implants are titanium, which is tried and true. And it's been around for 40 years, very inert material, we had very little problems with the actual implants and hip replacement surgery, but where we have had problems was with the bearing surface where the ball and socket actually came together. We know that metal on metal attempts, which were designed to have durability, and last an extremely long time, had a lot of issues and these were really picked up in the early 2000s through the late 2000s, 2009, 2010. Since then, we have shifted away from that. And now the bearing surface that is probably the most common is a highly crosslinked polyethylene, lighter in the acid tabular cup and a ceramic femoral head which have characteristics similar to what a metal on metal bearing surface would have, but without the problems of some of the reaction issues that, that small population of patients would experience. And so by and large, the implants that we use are extremely safe. They've been on the market for 30 plus years. They've had very, very little issues in terms of recalls or patient reactions to them. And I think that's something that's very important to talk to patients about especially if they have questions regarding that.
#hipreplacement #kneereplacement #orthopedicsurgeon #jointreplacement
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