Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Manager's Guide to Hot Technology - April 2016

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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4 4 S U P P L E M E N T T O O U T P A T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 we just open up the box and pin the guides to the femur and tibia to help guide the cuts," says Lee E. Rubin, MD, FAAOS, assistant professor of orthopedic sur- gery at Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, R.I. By pre-planning the cuts, you can save time in the OR and get a more precise alignment in the joint. Plus, some experts believe that you can lower the risk of infection and blood loss, since you're not inserting metal rods inside the bones to guide the incisions as you would with standard instrumentation. However, Paul A. Manner, MD, FRCSC, joint replacement professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, notes that studies backing up many of these claims are still lacking. "There's no real evidence that customized cutting blocks make a difference in terms of outcomes," he says. Plus, Dr. Rubin says there are more upfront costs tacked onto the procedure when using the patient-specific instrumentation, thanks to the addition of the CT scan or MRI imaging, as well as the higher price tag for the guides them- selves. While you can save time in the OR, surgeons may also have to put in additional legwork before the procedure. The cutting blocks can be used for nearly any patient undergoing a total knee replacement, but many surgeons are trying to figure out which ones are best served by the technology. "That's the question that everyone is trying to answer," says Dr. Rubin. "If you're going to spend the money on the process and the time it takes to review the plans, it's best for patients with an unusual anatomy or patients with severe deformities." One step further Dr. Buch says 3D-printed patient-specific implants designed to uniquely fit a patient's anatomy are generating a lot of buzz. Like the cutting blocks, customized implants require patients to undergo a pre-op CT scan. The implant manufacturer then uses the scan and special computer software to design the unique implant and customized cutting blocks. The implant is then created using 3D-printing technolo- gy. It arrives at your facility in a single box along with all of the instrumentation your

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