A 70 –year old female’s (Patient A) quality of life was being significantly compromised by increasing levels of pain from a detoriating hip.

“She was grossly disabled as a result of the dislocation of her old hip replacement into the pelvic area itself,” says Mr Paul Armour, Orthopaedic Surgeon. “It was potentially dangerous, particularly in terms of salvaging the situation.”

The basic objective was to get the woman who was in considerable discomfort, and largely house-bound, mobile again.

Mr Armour didn’t believe an off-the-shelf implant was likely to be effective in a case this extreme. Instead he turned to the personalised implant service offered by OMNI life science and Enztec.

CT data was taken and fed into the development process, along with Mr Armour’s assessment and surgical objectives. A computer model of the implant was developed and a solid bio-model produced for Mr Armour’s approval.

From these specifications a personalised implant was grown in under three weeks using Electron Beam Melting.
The result is a very specific implant that can only fit the patient in question, and is likely to fit more neatly with the anatomy than a traditional off the shelf implant.

Mr Armour said this was a potentially difficult procedure, “Having something that conformed to the patient’s anatomy made a potentially technically difficult procedure into something much easier,” says Mr Armour.

A scheduled six hour surgery was completed in three. “The implant fitted as it was designed to.”

“Surgery is like planning a war; it involves a lot of careful preparation, skilled staff, and the correct equipment. We staked our plan on the custom implant in this case, and it worked.

“The alternative is much harder, trying to use an off-the-shelf implant, bone graft, having to modify or bend it. All that was taken away because the implant was carefully engineered. That’s the beauty of the personalised implant.”
Mr Armour said the cost was very competitive with off-the-shelf alternatives.

Having observed similar development processes at the world-leading Hospital for Special Surgery in New York Mr Armour said this personalised implant service is right up there. “What they are doing at is state of the art.”

The most gratifying part for all parties has been the outcome for Patient A. As Mr Armour describes it, “She is great, she is walking around, she has no pain, and she’s over the moon.”