Healio/Orthopedics Today reported on recent HSS research that found a custom osseointegration implant had a lower rate of distal chip fracture vs. an off-the-shelf osseointegrated implant. 

Taylor J. Reif, MD, orthopedic surgeon at HSS shared, "Within the last 5 to 10 years there has been a lot more industry that has been capable of quickly turning around custom titanium implants with a textured surface that can achieve osseointegration and be made whatever shape we need it to be made. Seeing this trend happening within orthopedics, we applied it to osseointegration. In our case, we thought this is an odd shape to this bone, maybe we should try something custom to get a better fit and then assessing the custom group vs. our prior group.”

“The biggest difference we saw was, intraoperatively, the custom implants had a much lower rate — 0% — when we looked at our initial cohort of fracturing the bone while putting in the implant,” Reif said. “That makes sense because the implants have been custom fit to that bone, so it tends to go in nicely and fit perfectly.”

“This is something that we want to continue to evaluate because we know we are going to continue to be in these circumstances where we have oddly shaped bones that we would like to do osseointegration on, and having that option to have a custom fit implant is going to be nice, especially if they function ultimately in the same way as the other implants,” Reif said.

Read the full article at healio.com.