Macao, China – On August 26, MicroPort® Orthopedics hosted Asia Pacific Didactic Meeting in Macao. More than 60 orthopedic experts from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macao, Australia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea and other regions were gathered together to exchange ideas on the design rationale and surgical techniques of Medical Pivot Total Knee Replacement System as well as the clinical advantages and surgical techniques of SuperPath™ Micro-posterior Total Hip Arthroplasty ("SuperPath™").
During the session of knee replacement, Professor Lagast from Belgium introduced the history and development trend of the total knee prosthesis. Known as one of the most successful surgeries in the 20th century, total knee arthroplasty ("TKA") effectively relieves pain for patients with osteoarthritis and improves their life quality. With the advancement of joint replacement technology, patients have higher expectation on the operative outcome - not just pain relief, but improved function and better life quality as well. Currently, the total knee prostheses available in the market are developed based on different design rationales - some multi radius condylar implants with J curve design were introduced to the market based on the "four bar link theory", some posterior stabilized prosthesis with "post-cam mechanism" were designed to prevent dislocation. It has been reported that the traditional prostheses have over 90% ten-year survivorship but approximately 20% of patients are not satisfied with the outcome of their total knee replacement as a result of residual pain and functional issues.
Thus, how to break the restrictions of the TKA development? Professor Bruce from Australia shared the design rationale of the medial pivot knee. According to the findings of the orthopedic expert Professor Freeman, the knee flexion is more than the rollback of femoral condyle on the tibial plateau, and the movement range of the contact point of the tibiofemoral articular surface in the medial compartment is less than that in the lateral compartment. Therefore, the medial compartment is more stable than the lateral compartment in knee flexion, and the mobility of the lateral compartment makes the femoral rotation in knee flexion. As a new generation of the knee prostheses, the medial pivot knee is designed based on such theories. Compared to the traditional design of knee prostheses, medial pivot knee guarantees stability, safety and high flexion, and prevents the avoidance gait of the quadriceps femoris muscle resulted from paradoxical motion commonly seen in traditional knee implants, so as to offer better post-operative experience to patients and increase patient satisfaction.
MicroPort® Orthopedics' Medial Pivot Knee has over 20 years' clinical history, but what about its follow-up results in patients, especially Asian patients? Professor Bae from South Korea, who has over 30 years' experience in knee replacement, delivered a speech regarding the clinical experience in using medial pivot knee among Asian patients. Professor Bae has used several kinds of total knee prostheses, such as posterior stabilized, mobile bearing and cruciate retaining implants, and he discovered that the medial pivot knee has better post-operative results compared to other total knee prostheses, which demonstrated that the device can reconstruct the normal knee kinematics such as "roll back" and "medial pivoting" to improve patient satisfaction.
During the hip replacement session, Professor Lagast first reviewed the development history of total hip arthroplasty ("THA"). Since the emergence of glass cup in hip arthroplasty designed by Smith Petersen, THA has become the fastest growing field in the orthopedic industry with over 90% success rate at ten years. With the advancement of surgical technique, prosthesis design and materialogy, the indication of THA has been further expanded to help more patients relieve pain and restore function. Afterwards, Professor Qurashi of Australia Harbor Orthopedic Hospital had hot discussions with the experts regarding different THA approaches and the surgical advantages of SuperPath™ approach. He pointed out, SuperPath™ can maintain hip dynamic-stability structure by sparing musculi piriformis and external rotator muscles, and static-stability structure by sparing hip capsule as well. SuperPath™ brings the patient higher hip stability, lower postoperative complication rate and faster recovery to full function. He added, the most competitive advantages of SuperPath™ lies in "fallback technique." Surgeons can switch to the mini-incision approach or even the traditional posterolateral approach from SuperPath™ without changing the patient's position during their operations, which largely reduces the surgical risk and improves efficacy. Professor Qurashi then showed the unique advantage of SuperPath™ in facilitating faster return to function by follow-up videos, which enhanced the experts' understanding in SuperPath™ technique. Meanwhile, Professor Qurashi explained the key points of SuperPath™ technique step-by-step based on the surgical video and shared his clinical experience to help more surgeons understand and master such technique.
In the past decade, the philosophies of precise medicine and fast recovery have been widely accepted by orthopedic surgeons. SuperPath™ was introduced to China by MicroPort® Orthopedics to allow patients achieve better postoperative experience and faster return to function. SuperPath™ technique not only improves patient satisfaction but also help promote the "full function, faster" concept in China. MicroPort® Orthopedics will continue to host academic activities to provide a platform for orthopedic experts to exchange ideas to help drive the development of China's joint surgery industry and provide patients with better orthopedic solutions.