Relieve knee pain, retain agility and save your ACL with new knee replacement procedure

Relieve knee pain, retain agility and save your ACL with new knee replacement procedure


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Julie Harris was only 14 when she was diagnosed with arthritis, a condition that worsened as she aged to the point where the now 47-year-old experienced pain while simply walking around the grocery store or hitting the golf course.

But after a recent knee replacement at University Hospital in Salt Lake City, she's optimistic that her future may hold a more active lifestyle with less pain. Harris is one of dozens of patients to undergo a new procedure and product for total knee replacement at the University of Utah called Biomet Vanguard XP.

The procedure is an effective method to relieve knee pain for patients and to restore their function for activities such as walking, golfing, hiking, biking and skiing, said Chris Peters, M.D., an orthopedist at University of Utah Health Care who helped to design the product with five other surgeons.

click image to enlarge
click image to enlarge

Peters and colleagues developed the XP product, which is different than other products on the market because it allows surgeons to preserve the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) during knee replacements. That practice was previously difficult because of the quality of other products available for knee replacements, Peters said.

Creating the product came after physicians including Peters observed younger, more active patients in need of total knee replacements. Patients wanted to preserve their ACLs in order to maintain a more normal feeling knee following surgery, said Peters. Research from patients showed that nearly 15 to 20 percent who underwent a knee replacement with a more conventional knee arthroplasty to replace knee joints were unhappy with the end results related to their pain levels and knee function.

Peters realized that a possible explanation for patients' dissatisfaction was design of conventional total knee replacements, which he believed poorly replicated normal knee kinematics —motion, movement, and stability—precisely because they didn't retain a patient's ACL.

He designed the XP product with others to preserve the ACL with hopes to provide a more normal feeling and functioning knee. Ideas for a similar product had previously emerged In the 1970s and 1980s, but fizzled as a result of difficult surgical techniques to implant the products because of poor materials. The XP design that Peters and colleagues created incorporates early design features of products from decades ago, but improved upon the features that didn't work by markedly improving instrumentation to facilitate surgical technique and by building the product from better materials to result in better durability.

Now, any patient with an intact ACL can undergo Peter's XP total knee replacement procedure.

"The introduction of an ACL preserving total knee replacement is really a quantum shift in technology. All previous improvements in total knee replacement design have really been just slight refinements of existing implant designs," said Peters. "The XP total knee replacement changes the game completely and the major advantage is likely to be improved function in younger more, active patients who need a total knee replacement."

Peters and his colleague, fellow University of Utah orthopedist Chris Pelt, M.D., are the only physicians in Utah approved to implant the XP product so far.

"At University of Utah Health Care, we remain the only location to get XP now, and we will be the location with the most experience going forward," said Pelt.

The developers of the XP implant began using the product in May 2013 after receiving FDA approval. More than 600 of the products have been implanted in patients throughout the U.S. since that time, said Peters.

Biomet will begin to market the XP to a larger orthopedic community this summer, when the product and procedure is expected to continue gaining popularity. Total knee replacement with XP takes about 90 minutes, and patients work with a rehabilitation team to recover following surgery.

Patients interested in learning more about the product and procedure can contact the University of Utah Orthopaedic Center at (801) 587-7109.

To see other article sponsored by University of Utah Health Care click here.

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Melinda Rogers

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