Cayenne Medical Launches Mirror Partial Knee System

Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Cayenne Medical Inc. has launched its Mirror partial knee system for unicompartmental knee replacement procedures. The Mirror system uses a patient’s own ligaments to kinematically balance a patient’s knee as the definitive bone cuts are being made.

Ian Duncan M.D., a Rothman Institute trained orthopedic surgeon in Visalia, Calif., recently committed to implanting Mirror for all of his patients with unicompartmental arthritis.

“I believe ‘unis’ are better than total knee replacements for indicated patients because it’s a smaller surgery, there is less pain, offers a quicker recovery, and I can do them as an outpatient,” Duncan said. “The Mirror system gave me the confidence that I could put in a perfectly balanced unicompartmental knee replacement, without multiple cutting blocks, with smaller bone cuts, and most importantly without having to calculate or just qualitatively feel how to balance the ligaments. This is the most intuitive system I’ve used, and I believe this brings partial knee procedures to the next level, especially for those like me who don’t trust the balancing in other systems.”

Cayenne Medical recently acquired the Mirror technology to enhance its portfolio of innovative and value oriented sports medicine products. The Mirror was developed by Gerard A. Engh, M.D., a nationally and internationally recognized orthopedic surgeon, innovator, and researcher in partial and total knee replacement technology and surgical procedures.

“Ligament balancing remains one of the most challenging and variable aspects of the partial knee replacement procedure,” said Engh. “Rebalancing a unicondylar knee is more challenging than a total knee because all the ligaments must be synergistically correct, including both cruciate ligaments.”

Recent attempts to overcome these limitations have been made, including patient-specific cutting blocks, surgical navigation and robotics. Yet, the articular surfaces of the femur and tibia continued to be prepared independently, leaving soft tissue balancing as a corrective step after bone cuts, rather than a complementary step while bone cuts are made.

“It was this limitation that led us to re-think the surgical approach from the perspective of re-establishing natural knee balance in combination with preparing the implant surfaces,” added Engh.

“We are very excited to be bringing this next generation partial knee system to sports medicine and total joint surgeons who previously had no alternative but to use traditional techniques and surgical methods in the hope of balancing the knee” said David Springer, president and CEO of Cayenne Medical. “It is just so intuitive that the best outcome for any patient would result from using a patient’s own ligaments to guide implant placement.”

Cayenne Medical focuses on soft tissue ligament reconstruction in the knee and shoulder, and plans to expand focus to extremities in the future.