Stryker Rolls Out Interesting Product Mix at AAOS

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The Orthopaedics division of Kalamazoo, Mich.-based. Stryker Corporation recently received some news that would be music to most implant manufacturers’ ears.

During last week’s American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) annual conference in San Diego, Calif., Stryker presented reports from the National Joint Registry for England and Wales, which noted that Stryker’s Trident Cup, its Accolade hip stem and the Triathlon knee system has better revision rates than the most frequently used brands.

“Stryker focuses on developing products that can address the clinical issues that are most critical to implant performance,” said Mike Mogul, group president of Stryker Orthopaedics. “The National Joint Registry of England and Wales is incredibly important because it demonstrates the performance of implants on the market today and provides surgeon and hospital customers with valuable data, enabling them to make informed purchasing decisions to enhance clinical outcomes.”

According to the registry, Trident had the lowest revision rate (2.4 percent) among cementless cups at five years; Accolade had the lowest revision rate (2.8 percent) among cementless stems at five years, and Triathlon had the lowest revision rate (1 percent) among total knee replacement systems at three years for the second year in a row.

“The registry results are a validation of everything we’ve studies and how we have engineered our products,” Patrick Treacy, vice president and general manager of Stryker’s Knee Reconstruction business in Mahwah, N.J., told Orthopedic Design & Technology. “It isn’t just material. It’s not just design. Our success in this area is a combination of both. This is one of the reasons we’ve had market-leading growth for the last 16-20 [financial] quarters.”

In addition to the latest registry news, the company exhibited its latest innovations in tissue-preserving hip arthroscopy. The company’s new tissue-preservation hip arthroscopy platform is a comprehensive system of instrumentation and precision devices that play a role in restoring optimal hip biomechanics. Stryker also hosted several educational events during AAOS, allowing surgeon attendees to learn from peers and gain hands-on experience with these products. The platform is designed to provide optimal joint preservation with minimal complication.

Recent advances in the knowledge of and treatment of femoroacetabular impingement have led to the development of minimally invasive techniques to restore the biomechanics of the hip and delay or obviate the need for a total hip replacement.

According to Stryker officials at the annual meeting, the tissue-preserving systemincludes a high-definition visualization system called Ideal Eyes; a new cannulated access system, Serfas XL Ablation Probes; repair instrumentation and Formula XL blades featuring new angled cutter designs. The new instrumentation joins the Orthomap 3-D navigation package for CAM FAI and the TwinLoop FLEX labral repair system with a flexible drill and flexible suture anchor insertion handle for angled access to the acetabulum.

Another announcement by Stryker’s Orthopaedics division during AAOS may not be on par with a new breakthrough implant or positive study results, but it’s a fun example of the crossover between consumer electronics and medical devices.

The company has launched it’s first iPad applications for surgeons, available through Apple’s App Store, to help physicians enhance the patient education process and provide easy access to information about products and surgical techniques.

Several of Stryker’s other business units and divisions are already using iPads to enhance customers’ interactions with patients, including Craniomaxillofacial, Instruments, Endoscopy, Communications and Neurovascular. Stryker Orthopaedics also equipped its entire U.S. sales force with iPads, based on a successful 2010 pilot program. This shift to a digitally enabled sales strategy will also enable Stryker Orthopaedics to achieve significant savings annually by reducing the amount of paper the company ships by hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Historically, medical device makers’ interactions with surgeons and hospitals were paper-based, which consumed a significant amount of time and resources. The company’s goal is to provide surgeons with digital access to educational tools that can support their dialogue with self-educated patients.

Two apps have been created so fat to help support the evolving needs of healthcare practitioners and hospitals as well as Stryker’s sales and field operations in the United States.

Stryker Flipchart is a patient education tool designed to help orthopedic specialists explain a hip, knee or shoulder replacement procedure to patients who are either scheduled for surgery or contemplating total joint replacement. It contains overviews of a normal joint, arthritic joint and replaced joint, using graphics and x-rays. Surgeons are also able to customize and annotate the images to support patient discussions.

OpTech Live is a guide to Stryker’s surgical protocols with a touch-screen interface. The app includes information about Stryker products ranging from extremities to hip, knee, sports medicine and trauma.

“This is all part of a better, more efficient healthcare solution,” said Bill Huffnagle, vice president and general manager of Hip Reconstruction. “Our technology is more than one-sided—just about the implant and its efficacy. This—the iPad apps—is yet another way to help the patient population better understand their procedures, make the system more effective, healthcare providers more efficient, etc.”