Materialise/Exactech
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Materialise has announced a collaboration with Exactech to provide advanced treatment options for patients with severe shoulder defects.
Exactech is a developer and producer of innovative implants, instrumentation, and smart technologies for joint replacement surgery.
The medical company will include the Materialise Glenius solution in their portfolio, enabling surgeons to help patients with personalised implants in Europe and Australia. The company says that shoulder replacements account for approximately 60% of orthopaedic extremity procedures and represent one of the fastest-growing markets in orthopaedics.
The company says that surgeons are looking for treatment options to improve clinical outcomes even for challenging cases. Orthopaedic surgeons can leverage Materialise’s personalised implants to treat patients with substantial glenoid bone loss for whom standard and augmented reverse shoulder implants would not lead to sustainable results, according to the company.
“By including the Materialise Glenius implant into our existing offering, we’re providing surgeons in Europe and Australia access to an even more extensive shoulder portfolio,” said Chris Roche, Exactech Sr. Vice President, Extremeties. “We are happy to partner with Materialise to bring greater personalisation and additional artificial intelligence technology to shoulder reconstruction.”
Materialise’s clinical engineers design each Glenius implant based on the patient’s unique anatomy using 3D data, simulation, and artificial intelligence. Optimising the fixation and stability of the implant while maximising bone preservation aims for more predictable clinical outcomes in the most challenging eroded glenoid scenarios says the company.
“Demand is growing in the orthopedic industry for personalisation of medical devices,” said Brigitte de Vet, Vice President, Medical at Materialise. “Medical device companies adopt mass personalisation by starting with high-value use cases and moving towards more high-volume applications. Materialise is dedicated to enabling researchers, engineers, and clinicians to revolutionise patient-specific treatment that improves clinical outcomes.”
TCT spoke to the Materialise CTO Bart van der Schueren at Formnext 2022 about the company's CO-AM platform and the duty of companies in the AM industry to learn from one another.