Dr. Andrew G. King believes that Medicrea’s patient-specific rod is ahead of its time.
 
King is a former president of the medical staff at Children’s Hospital New Orleans who also served on the Board of Directors for Children’s Hospital and Kenner Regional Medical Center. He uses Medicrea’s patient-specific technology to provide adolescent scoliosis patients with a second chance at a normal life.
 
In a video interview, which includes testimonials from three teenage patients treated using Medicrea’s UNiD rods and services, Dr. King said, “The patient-specific rod is very much ahead of its time. When we finish the operation, we’ve left them with the best possible appearance for the rest of their lives. The curve is not going to worsen and there is less likelihood of them having pain.”
 
With its UNiD approach to surgery, Medicrea pushes industry standards with customized rods for cervical, thoracic and lumbar operations, scientifically matching the rod’s shape with the patient’s unique spinal alignment and taking into account the surgeon’s preoperative plan. This eliminates the difficulty of manually bending the rods during the surgery and significantly reduces time in the operating room.
 
For King, this approach to surgery has vastly improved his practice and ability to better understand patients before the operation.
 
Medicrea’s UNiD Lab team partners with the surgeon for each case to conduct a precise software analysis of each patient as the surgeon determines an operative strategy for the patient’s unique complication.
 
“We are convinced that strategic surgical planning and analysis are key elements of a successful spinal surgery. Each time we support a surgeon like Dr. King, we are also benefiting by building a larger and larger data set that can be used to define the optimum strategy for the next individual patient,” Medicrea Chairman and CEO Denys Sournac said. “We are building something that is ultimately much larger than a patient-specific implant. Our work stands to benefit the health system as a whole.”
 
Karly, one of King’s patients, described her surgery as life-changing.
 
Patients treated with UNiD also benefit from spending less time under anesthesia, often times cutting 10-15 minutes off surgery time and reducing the amount of blood loss and the possible need for a transfusion. As a result, patients have a better chance of recovering at a faster pace.
 
Medicrea recently received U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance to offer UNiD Rods in the cervical spine and surpassed more than 700 patients treated with custom UNiD Thoracolumbar Rods.
 
The Medicrea Group specializes in the design, manufacture, and distribution of spinal surgery technologies. Its headquarters are based near Lyon, France. It also has an implant and surgical instrument manufacturing facility located in La Rochelle, France, as well as four distribution subsidiaries in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France.