Zimmer Biomet Holdings, Inc.’s Trabecular Metal Cups are associated with lower infection rates and a significant reduction in subsequent hip revision rates.
That’s according to data reported by the company on December 14, 2016 from a new report by the National Joint Registry (NJR) for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Isle of Man. The pool of participants included more than 9, 500 patients undergoing revision hip arthroplasty.
Infections, implant loosening, pain and dislocation are the most common reasons for revision joint replacement surgery.
The company said the analysis conducted by NJR demonstrated the following:
- The cups were shown to be 21% less likely to be re-revised due to infection (statistically significant, p-value=0.036).
- For high risk patients with a first revision indication being infection, the cups appear to be 35% less likely to be re-revised for infection. Due to the limited sample size, this has not reached statistical significance (not statistically significant, p-value=0.108).
- The cups were shown to be 11% less likely to be re-revised for any reason (statistically significant, p-value=0.015).
The report retrospectively analyzed outcomes related to 9, 573 revision procedures using cementless Trabecular Metal Cups and 30, 452 revision procedures using non-Trabecular Metal cementless cups, from April 2003 through July 2015. The complete NJR report can be found at www.zimmerbiomet.com/TM.
Dan Williamson, Zimmer Biomet Group President of Joint Reconstruction, said the NJR report reinforces the cup’s value in “significantly reducing hip revision rates in a large clinical patient population and yielding better outcomes in comparison to traditional non-Trabecular Metal implants.”
Trabecular Metal, per the company, is a highly porous biomaterial made from elemental tantalum with structural, functional and physiological properties similar to bone. The material, which features a 100% open, engineered and interconnected pore structure to support bony in-growth and vascularization, has been used in a variety of orthopedic applications for more than 19 years.
Javad Parvizi, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon at the Rothman Institute at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, said infection after orthopedic procedures has “moved into center stage.” He added, “Based on recent data from various sources, it appears that Trabecular Metal implants have unique properties that allow them to reduce the incidence of infection after revision total hip arthroplasty. This finding is encouraging and should provide impetus for us to design studies that unravel the exact anti-infective properties of Trabecular Metal implants.”
The NJR was set up by the Department of Health and Welsh Government in 2002 to collect information on all hip, knee, ankle, elbow and shoulder replacement operations, to monitor the performance of joint replacement implants and the effectiveness of different types of surgery.
