Zimmer Holdings, Inc. may launch two “significant” new products at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons’ (AAOS) February 2012 annual meeting in San Francisco. That’s what Mizuho Securities Analyst Mike Matson wrote to investors on December 9. Matson said the products would include a new knee to replace the company’s “aging” NexGen knee and vitamin [...]

Zimmer Holdings, Inc. says it has a new hip stem technology now available in the U.S. that enables surgeons to “better match patients’ individual anatomies” with modular neck options designed for independent, intraoperative adjustments. The CLS Brevius Hip Stem with Kinectiv Technology is based on the Zimmer CLS Spotorno Stem, which has been in use [...]

Smith & Nephew (NYSE:SNN) laid off 80 employees following the merger of its Andover, Mass.-based endoscopy unit and its Memphis, Tenn.-based orthopedic reconstruction unit, according to a report in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. The British orthopedic giant announced that it would combine the two units in July, alongside the resignation of Memphis-based orthopaedic reconstruction president Joseph [...]

The numbers just keep going up. Knee replacement surgery among the middle-aged in the U.S. increased two and a half times between 1997 and 2009 according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), as reported in MedPage Today. The hospitalization rate for women ages 45 to 64 for knee arthroplasty increased 157% from 16 [...]

Stryker Corp, claims that DePuy’s, Wright Medical’s, Zimmer’s and Smith & Nephew’s hip replacement systems utilizing a dual-locking mechanism, all infringe on Stryker’s ‘243 patent. Howmedica Osteonics Corp. in New Jersey, and Stryker Ireland Ltd of Cork, Ireland, (Stryker) is suing DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc., Wright Medical Technology, Inc., Zimmer, Inc. and Smith & Nephew, Inc. [...]

Currently, more than 30% of knee replacement surgeries suffer from misalignment problems caused by the “fog of surgery” where the precise orientation of internal bones is difficult to determine, asserts Darius Kharabi, vice-president of corporate development for OrthAlign, a privately held medical device company in Aliso Viejo, California. The company was founded in 2008 to [...]

Tornier, Inc. introduced the Porous Coated Affinity Stem for shoulder joint replacement surgery on May 19. The company announcement stated the stem facilitates device fixation to bone without bone cement and addresses a large segment of the market represented by patients for whom fixation with cement is a problem. The company believes the expanded Affinity [...]

Biomedical engineersdeveloped a robotic arm to very precisely resurface the kneebefore replacing it. In order to do this, a 3-D image of the knee is generated, providing a live-action view of the knee duringsurgery. A stereo camera system constantly updatessurgeons on the location of the diseased portion of the knee–this keeps the healthy parts untouched. Visual alarms and artificial resistance tell [...]

Very high level “tinkering”…Exactech, Inc. announced today that it is fully launching the Equinoxe Fx Plate after an extensive development process. In the April 28 news release, Kenneth Egol, M.D., professor and vice chair at NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases in New York City and chief of the division of Orthopaedic Trauma, said that surgeons [...]

Using injectable hollow, biodegradable nanofiber spheres as cell carriers is likely to repair knee cartilage more effectively than current methods, said US researchers in a paper published online in Nature Materials this week. Lead author Peter Ma, a professor at the University of Michigan (U-M) School of Dentistry, told the press they hope their method will [...]