Other Articles

Biologics for Spine: Where We Are Now
Dr. Jeffrey Wang, Chief of the UCLA Spine Service and Director of the UCLA Spine Surgery Fellowship, discusses the exciting happenings in spine biologics, including growth factors, the use of different genes, and injecting stem cells into the disc. And then there are the challenges, namely the disc environment and the funding environment.

Physician Medicare Payments: Grandma vs. Docs
The fight over Medicare physician payments in Congress has been reduced to a fight over limited public dollars between Grandma and her physician. Is this a prelude to how public health care policy will be decided in the future? Read about the tussle here.

Spine Niche! Opportunity in the Spinal Deformity Market
Given the myriad of start-up companies pursuing the same patients, product differentiation and solutions for specific target markets could be the key in the future. Using the PearlDiver Patient Records Database we estimate procedure volumes for posterior fusion as a treatment for scoliosis—followed by the results of a study identifying complications associated with instrumented posterior thoracic fusion in treating scoliosis.

AAOS Political Action Committee
Active players in the orthopedic field know the importance of the AAOS Political Action Committee (PAC). On the cusp of hot topics affecting physicians and patients, the AAOS PAC works diligently to provide data to members of Congress and improve the present and future of orthopedics.

Who ARE These Guys?
Every 60 seconds or so a surgeon tears the cover off an Integra LifeSciences package. Quietly, this company has become the seventh largest medical implant manufacturer serving orthopedic surgeons in the world. Where to now? Would you believe $1 billion in two years? How about $2 billion by 2015?

Redemption in a Mechanism of Failure: The TOPS™ Story
Impliant’s TOPS™ System had a “squeaker” in its clinical study. After a voluntary suspension of the study by the company and finding the mechanism of failure, the FDA has approved a resumption of the study. What insider lessons were learned? Class starts here.

Who is Numero Uno in the PearlDiver Database!! Are You Surprised?
The answer may surprise you. Is it sore backs, aching hips, sore knees, fingers? PearlDiver details 3.8 million spine related complaints—complete with demographic information and charging information. But that’s not #1. PearlDiver also lists 3.5 million large joint complaints. Sorry, still not #1. What could the most common orthopedic complaint possibly be? To get the surprising answer…read on.

What the Knees Need: Baby Boomers and Their Options
Knee patients often show up at the doctor’s office with recurrent mechanical symptoms. It is up to the orthopedist, says Dr. Giles R. Scuderi, Director and orthopedic surgeon with the Insall, Scott & Kelly Institute in Manhattan, to thoroughly assess the patient and then determine if nonoperative treatment will do, or if the person needs a unicompartmental or total knee procedure.

Physician: Report Thyself
The government says its healthcare anti-fraud efforts are working and it wants to encourage physicians to self-report possible fraud. How well did the government do in 2007 and what about those deferred-prosecution deals with undisclosed evidence? Read about it here.

Revising the Statistics
The word that orthopedic patients least want to hear is “revision.” Who, in the universe of large joint patients, do we expect to see on the receiving end of this news? If you guessed “the elderly” you would have been wrong. The reality of who is hearing “revision” may come as a surprise. Read what we found when probing PearlDiver’s database.

Where Is Ben Now? Trends in Venture Capital
What is being funded by VCs and why? First of all, spine is having to share the spotlight, says Gary Stevenson, Managing Partner at MB Venture Partners, LLC. Here Stevenson outlines what constitutes an attractive investment…he also highlights issues that are affecting the distribution of VC funding.

The Hounds of Wall Street
Conventional wisdom on Wall Street is that ArthroCare is in a bare-knuckle fight to the finish with short sellers. Which leaves us with the dominating question: If ArthroCare is essentially a “lame duck” growth stock, then why are sales, earnings, and the stock price contradicting the short seller’s dire predictions and even outperforming consensus analyst forecasts? We have the answer.

The Era of “Tell Me Right Now” Dawns at FDA
The FDA wants the next phase of post-market oversight to change from self reporting to proactive surveillance. How? Through the Sentinel Initiative. Read what it means to device manufacturers here.

The Day After Tomorrow: Complication Rates and Instrumentation Trends in Posterior Lumbar Fusion
Could PearlDiver be the Nostradamus of spinal instrumentation? This most commonly performed surgery on the lumbar region of the spine increases fusion rates and improves spinal stability—but what about complications? Using PearlDiver’s database we find the answers. Are you ready for some quatrains about what happens next?

You Try It. No You Try It First: New Technology Adoption
What are the forces working for and against new technology adoption? Youth versus age, risk taking versus conservatism, and the economic realities of the day, says Dr. Rick Guyer, President of the Texas Back Institute.

Cheaper, Thinner, Faster, Stronger
In this, the second of our series of three articles on innovation, we tackle the question: How do you measure medical technology innovation? While difficult, measuring innovation is NOT impossible. Why? Well to start, and in the immortal words of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, “We know it when we see it.”

SAS Crosses the Rubicon in Miami Beach
The SAS 8th Annual Global Symposium in Miami Beach may have crossed the Rubicon. How? Read about the Society’s opportunities for growth and collaboration as its new President lays out a vision for the future.

PNo more wondering Down Under. The data is in. Smith & Nephew, Inc.’s Orthopaedic Reconstruction business is announcing the release of positive six-year clinical data by the Australian Orthopaedic Association National Joint Replacement Registry on the company’s BIRMINGHAM HIP Resurfacing System (BHR™). According to the company, the BHR, which has now been implanted in nearly 80,000 patients in 26 countries, conserves more of a patient’s bone than a traditional hip replacement, enabling younger, more active patients to undergo hip replacement surgery while preserving all future surgery options, including a primary hip replacement. The design of the BIRMINGHAM HIP Resurfacing System also offers patients a reduced risk of dislocation. The report revealed that the BHR device has the highest hip resurfacing system survivability rate among all of its established competitors for which data had been collected.

Included in the Australian report was the following information:

• Since the inception of the registry, the BIRMINGHAM HIP Resurfacing System has been the overwhelming choice of patients—over 75% of resurfacing procedures have used the BHR device.
  
  
• The BHR System has a revision rate of 0.8 per 100 component years or 2.5%.
  
  
• The BHR System’s rate is derived from 19,585 component years, 19 times that of any other resurfacing competitor.
  
  
• Three alternative hip resurfacing systems were cited for their high revision rates.
  
  
• According to the registry, hip resurfacing accounts for 7.9% of all primary hip replacements.

Commenting in the news release was Joseph DeVivo, President of Smith & Nephew Orthopaedic Reconstruction: “We are extremely pleased with the Registry’s results. The report once again highlights the ability of the BIRMINGHAM HIP Resurfacing System to help people maintain the most active and healthy lifestyle possible. The BIRMINGHAM HIP Resurfacing System lets active people live the life they love and continue to pursue their passions. The long-term clinical data available clearly demonstrates the benefits of the BIRMINGHAM HIP Resurfacing System, which is the gold standard for resurfacing technology in the world and a significant addition to our reconstructive product portfolio in the United States.”

The Registry evaluates the timing and reasons for revision surgery as well as mortality rates, and it measures the success rates of products and procedures across Australia. This year’s report is based on the analysis of 332,700 hip and knee procedures undertaken in 271,188 patients from September 1999 through December 31, 2006.

According to the company, the study is highly regarded for its comprehensiveness and accuracy because the Registry is able to obtain a near-complete set of data relating to hip and knee joint replacement for an entire country. The Registry receives information from all public and private hospitals undertaking joint replacement. Using a strict validation process and following retrieval of unreported records and checking of unmatched data, the initial validation for the 2005/6 Registry data resulted in over 96% of Registry records verified against health department data.