NEW YORK, NY and LYON, France (June 13, 2016) – MEDICREA,® (Alternext Paris: FR0004178572 – ALMED) the only medical device company offering patient-specific analytical services and custom implant solutions for the treatment of spinal conditions, recently partnered with Children’s Hospital orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Andrew G. King, to speak on his successes using Medicrea’s UNiD™ rods for customized spinal surgeries.
The former president of the medical staff at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, who also served on the Board of Directors for Children’s Hospital and Kenner Regional Medical Center, now utilizes Medicrea’s patient-specific technology to provide young adolescents suffering from scoliosis with a second chance at a normal life.
In his video interview, which includes testimonials from three teenage patients treated using Medicrea’s UNiD™ services, Dr. King states “The patient-specific rod is very much ahead of its time. When we finish the operation, we’ve left them with the best possible appearance for the rest of their lives. The curve is not going to worsen and there is less likelihood of them having pain.”
With their UNiD approach to surgery, Medicrea continues to push industry standards with customized rods for Cervical, Thoracic and Lumbar operations, scientifically matching the rod’s shape with the patient’s unique spinal alignment and taking into account the surgeon’s preoperative plan. This eliminates the difficulty of manually bending the rods during the surgery and significantly reduces time in the operating room.
For Dr. King, this game-changing approach to surgery has vastly improved his practice and ability to better understand patients before the operation, stating “I personally have been bending those rods for 34 years. I’ve been underwhelmed by my ability to bend a rod so that it matches the perfect numbers. The surgical rods which we put in to fix the scoliosis are specific to each particular patient.”
With UNiD™ innovations, surgeons like Dr. King are able to deal with problems that could never have been addressed before. Medicrea’s UNiD Lab team partners with the surgeon for each case to conduct a precise software analysis of each patient as the surgeon determines an operative strategy for the patient’s unique complication. This radical new approach to surgery, paired with Medicrea’s customized UNiD™ rods, ensures patients receive the best care available.
Medicrea’s Chairman and CEO, Denys Sournac, provided further insight stating, “We are convinced that strategic surgical planning and analysis are key elements of a successful spinal surgery. Each time we support a surgeon like Dr. King, we are also benefiting by building a larger and larger data set that can be used to define the optimum strategy for the next individual patient. We are building something that is ultimately much larger than a patient-specific implant – Our work stands to benefit the health system as a whole.”
Karly, one of Dr. King’s patients, is a prime example of Mr. Sournac’s vision for personalized medicine in Spine. She described her surgery as life-changing. The 14-year-old treated using Medicrea’s services mentioned, “If I slept a certain way or just sat certain ways it would cause pain. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to play softball or do cheer. It’s been almost four months. I started playing softball again and made the team.” Historically, recovery times like Karly’s were unheard of.
Although Dr. King has decades of experience in the medical field, even he has been pleasantly surprised by the rapid recovery of recent patients treated through Medicrea, stating “I’m actually amazed at what my patients can do these days, in particular after a major surgery.”
Patients treated with UNiD also benefit from spending less time under anesthesia, often times cutting 10-15 minutes off surgery time and reducing the amount of blood loss and the possible need for a transfusion. As a result, patients have a better chance of recovering at a faster pace.
In other news, Medicrea recently received FDA clearance to offer UNiD™ Rods in the cervical spine and surpassed more than 700 patients treated with custom UNiD™ Thoracolumbar Rods with analysis performed before and after surgery, demonstrating the growing demand and appreciation for patient-specific operations worldwide.
About MEDICREA (www.medicrea.com)
The MEDICREA Group specializes in the design, manufacture, and distribution of innovative proprietary technologies devoted exclusively to spinal surgery. Operating in a $10 billion market, MEDICREA operates with 150 employees, including 40 at its MEDICREA USA Corp. subsidiary based in New York City.
The Company enjoys an excellent and ever-improving innovator reputation, and develops unique scientific partnerships with some of the most visionary and creative spine surgeons. The products developed and patented by MEDICREA provide neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons specializing in the spine with new and less-invasive surgical solutions that are faster and easier to implement than traditional techniques.
MEDICREA has also become a pioneer and global leader in the manufacturing of customized implants for personalized spinal surgery with the development of a comprehensive process incorporating the software analysis of each patient, the pre-surgical planning of the surgical strategy, and the production of customized spinal osteosynthesis rods (UNiD™ rod) and lumbar interbody osteosynthesis cages (UNiD™ ALIF cage) that are made to measure by a 3D printer.
The Group’s headquarters are based near Lyon, France. It also has an implant and surgical instrument manufacturing facility located in La Rochelle, France, as well as four distribution subsidiaries in the USA, the UK, Germany and France.
