surgery took place at Franciscan St. Francis Health in Carmel, Ind., and was performed by orthopaedic surgeon Jeffery Pierson, MD, a member of the design team for this new hip replacement implant.
"It has been an incredibly gratifying experience to be directly involved in the design and development of a device that performed as well in surgery as I anticipated it would," said Pierson. "Clinically relevant improvements to devices, such as the ones we made with the new Tapered Wedge Stem, allow us to continue to provide the best standard of care to our patients."
Over the past two years, Dr. Pierson and Michael Kang, MD, from the Insall-Scott-Kelly Institute in New York, N.Y., consulted with Exactech to bring to market a newly designed stem that addresses several clinical challenges that many surgeons face with current product design philosophies.
The Tapered Wedge Stem, which is currently in the pilot launch phase of release, incorporates specific features designed to achieve axial and rotational mechanical stability between the lateral and medial cortices of the femoral canal. This product will be expanding to a limited number of additional sites within the coming months, and company officials report a full launch within the U.S. is expected to take place in January of 2015.
"We are pleased to provide this technology to patients who can benefit from the Alteon Tapered Wedge Stem," said Exactech CEO David Petty. "This design philosophy represents about 40 percent of the market for cementless stems in the U.S. This new products gives us an opportunity to reach many more patients needing total hip replacement."
