Check this out. New material made out of calcium sulfate and tri calcium phosphate.
St Jude's hospital in Memphis is using it for AVN ( osteo-necrosis) but only a few patients have been treated with it. I can not find stats in this. This new material works better, so far, than cadaver bone grafts and other cement and materials used to fill in those voids.
"Robert Heck, M.D., an orthopaedic oncologist at the Campbell Clinic in Memphis, Tennessee stated, "Wright's new system is a simple but important advancement to the standard core decompression procedure. Through a minimally invasive approach, I can now debride more of the necrotic bone lesion and fill the surgically created void with the PRO-DENSE(TM) graft. In a retrospective study of 35 hips in 24 patients over the past 18 months, the early results are very encouraging."
I actually had the second total hip replacement on the right side two and a half months ago. They had to replace the plastic liner which had worn down and there was significant bone loss. Some of the loss was behind the ball-socket and there will be no way to know if bone grows back inn that area because it will not show up on am X-ray only CT scan and I do not need more radiation. We can see that bone is growing around the areas we can see on x rays around the prosthesis. I decided to give this a try when my surgeon at UM, Dr. Blaha, told me he had a new material which shows great hope in helping bone grow back where there was once necrotic holes in the hip region because the area is encapsulated and has time to do it's work before disintegrating. It has not worked as well in knees. I already asked if he would try it with knees and he said he did not feel it would work. I trust his opinion. We have decided to do something with the knees called drilling, similar to core decompression where they drill holes in the bones around the knee with hopes of stimulating natural bone growth. Starting with right knee where there is more bone loss in the tibia, femur and some patella spots. Then the left and I should be able to be even more of an active, vibrant, exercising woman on the move with out swelling, pain and limps or walkers-canes-wheel chairs.
What is amazing is that very few Dr.'s know about this. Share the info with your ortho surgeon and others.
I am excited about this and I understand it is very new and still "experimental" for use with humans. I will keep you posted. And no more PT. I am free to work out on my own.
