Carl Deirmengian, M.D. is the winner of the 2020 Kappa Delta Elizabeth Winston Lanier Award from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). Dr. Deirmengian, an orthopedic surgeon and associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Rothman Orthopaedic Institute in Philadelphia, received this honor for his work on synovial fluid biomarkers and the first FDA-Authorized diagnostic test for use in orthopedics.
After 15 years of synovial fluid research, Dr. Deirmengian created the Alpha-defensin Lateral Flow Test, which aids in the detection of periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) and may help avoid unnecessary joint revision surgeries. As he moved from Harvard Medical School to residency at the University of Pennsylvania then to a fellowship at Rush University, all along Carl Deirmengian was leaping over obstacles or finding ways around them.
And while he never had a chance to sit at the feet of the ancient stoics, Dr. Deirmengian surely took to heart several of their maxims. In the words of Marcus Aurelius, “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
A Novel Approach to Infection Research
According to published research and AAOS[1], there are approximately 65,000 hip and knee replacement infections, costing the U.S. health care system $1.6 billion annually. And the earlier and more accurately these infections are detected, the better.
Truth be told, what culminated in the revered Kappa Delta Award began with a bit of lowly pus.
Dr. Deirmengian: “While at Harvard in 1999 I was working in a cancer lab during the time that gene arrays came out. This made it possible to take sample tissue and know which exact genes were turned on and to what degree. I was a bit of an enigma because few people in orthopedics at that time made forays into genomics. My unusual approach to research involved collecting pus from a joint—one of the purest things in the body—and putting it on a gene chip.”
And why pus? “It is very pure because it is full of neutrophils and little else. My initial thought was that I would take the fluid and put it on a gene chip, hoping that I would see a difference in patients who get infected and those who do not. At that time, diagnosting infection was an enormous challenge in the field. Even if an infection is present, sometimes the sample doesn’t grow bacteria. I tried to pursue this line of research academically during residency at the University of Pennsylvania, but the lab was not focused on PJI diagnostics at that time.”
