New Knee Implant Offers Long-Awaited Option for Osteoarthritis Sufferers

June 25, 2007 - The OrthoGlide^TM medial knee implant (Advanced Bio-Surfaces, Inc.) is the newest minimally invasive option available for patients who have exhausted other non-surgical therapies, and are not ready for total, or even partial, knee replacement.

Recently approved by the FDA for use in the United States and the European Union, the implant is currently being utilized in suburban Chicago at Alexian Brothers Medical Center, Elk Grove Village, Ill., and St. Alexius Medical Center, Hoffman Estates, Ill. David Trotter, M.D. is one of the device's initial investigators, and one of the only Chicago area orthopedic surgeons currently approved for implantation of the OrthoGlide^TM; having performed nearly twenty implants on patients with osteoarthritis of the medial compartment of the knee.

"The OrthoGlide^TM is even more potentially advantageous than the knee-preserving UniSpacer^TM has been because it associates with the lower half of the knee joint and barely moves," stated Dr. Trotter.

"Advanced Bio-Surfaces is excited to expand the surgical treatment options currently available to patients with osteoarthritis," stated Dr. Jeff Felt, Chairman and CEO of Advanced Bio-Surfaces. "We believe the OrthoGlide^TM medial knee implant may be a better choice for patients facing more invasive treatments, which usually require extensive tissue and bone removal."

The OrthoGlide^TM is a metallic, tibial-plateau oriented knee implant used to reduce pain and correct specific angular knee abnormalities. The cobalt-chrome alloy composition is intended to replace some of the cartilage function lost to osteoarthritis. The implant's unique engineering design provides positional stability without sacrificing bone or utilization of fixation methods such as cement or screws. Its specially contoured geometry provides an open glide path, allowing for the unconstrained motion of the femoral condyle.

The procedure requires significantly less tissue and no bone removal, as compared to replacement options. The system also includes devices used to optimize custom fitting of the implant.

"From a technology standpoint this has been an under-served area of orthopedics," said Dr. Felt. Dr. David Trotter is a principal investigator in a national study on the OrthoGlide^TM interpositional knee disc alternative to knee replacement, which was recently approved by the Alexian Brothers Hospital Network Institutional Review Board. Dr. Trotter, a Board-Certified Orthopedist, and Fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, was among the international speakers recently featured at the annual conference of the European Clinical Orthopedic Research Society in Bologna, Italy, where he presented a program on Interpositional Knee Discs: Clinical Experience with UniSpacer^TM and the earliest experience with OrthoGlide^TM for knee arthritis.