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Chelmsford Businessman gets Revolutionary New 'Knee'

March 03, 2004

The active, younger population of Chelmsford, who suffer from arthritis or chronic injury can now benefit from knee replacement surgery much earlier in life due to new implant technology, called Oxinium™, which has recently been made available to everyone in the UK after 11 years of tests.

Mr Steven Riches, a 53-year-old businessman with his own company, the Rose Property Maintenance company in Chelmsford, received one of the first Oxinium knee implants in the UK when his right knee degenerated over the years following a sports injury while playing football in 1978. He said "I suffered with pain and very limited movement in my right knee for over 25 years, and before the operation I could only walk a couple of hundred yards because of the pain. Since having the Oxinium knee implant I have made a remarkable recovery - within three weeks I could drive again, within two months I could walk a mile with no pain, and I'm back working at my company. My new knee has quite literally given me a new lease of life, and I'm so pleased that I didn't have to wait until I was older to have a traditional implant which isn't so hard wearing."

More than 30,000 knee replacement operations are carried out every year in the UK and approximately 400 of these in the Chelmsford region alone, with an increasing number carried out on people under the age of 60. Orthopaedic surgeons have traditionally delayed joint replacement surgery in patients younger than 60 because they do not expect the materials used to withstand the wear placed on them for longer than 10 to 15 years. Replacing the knee the second and third time is much harder and much less likely to succeed.

Mr Stephen Palmer, an orthopaedic surgeon at The Broomfield Hospital and The Springfield Hospital, Chelmsford, and a pioneer in using Oxinium implants performed Steve Riches' operation. He comments, "This knee replacement addresses one of the most critical issues in orthopaedics today, namely that the lower the amount of wear, the longer the implant will last.   Oxinium is a superior implant that is expected to last longer and will allow active, younger patients to benefit much earlier from a replacement knee. This in turn will reduce the amount of suffering a patient often experiences due to a painful knee."

British company Smith & Nephew developed this new metallic alloy in response to the orthopaedic community's concerns over wear and tear of current implants. After 11 years of development and biomechanical testing, the Oxinium knee implants are now widely available to patients in the Chelmsford area.

Currently, most knee implants are made from a cobalt-chrome alloy that slides against a plastic (polyethylene) bearing. The motion and friction caused by daily living can damage the implant's surface and cause metal and polyethylene wear debris, ultimately causing bone loss and the need for another implant.

Various metals, including titanium, have been used for implants and provide strength but do not address the issue of wear. Knee implants made of ceramics may reduce wear but are brittle and can crack. Because Oxinium components are made of a metallic zirconium alloy that is heated to convert the surface to a ceramic the best of both worlds can be achieved. Compared to cobalt chrome, Oxidized Zirconium, in knee wear simulation testing, reduced the rate of polyethylene wear by 85 per cent.

Oxinium will give younger or more active knee replacement candidates an alternative to waiting for knee replacement in discomfort and immobility until doctors decide they are more age-appropriate for a traditional implant.

Nickel sensitive patients also benefit
Oxinium is the first implant to contain non-detectable traces of nickel, providing a solution for patients identified as acutely allergic to this metal. Up to 8% of the population suffers with nickel allergy, and for the first time can now be offered a knee replacement, where previously few alternatives were available to them.

"We believe that this is going to be an industry-defining technology," said Mark Withers, Sales and Marketing Manager, Reconstruction, Smith & Nephew. "It's really a testament to what can happen when the industry listens to surgeons and seeks to find completely new and innovative solutions to their clinical issues. We feel confident that Oxinium will have an enormous impact on young patients suffering pain and disability from arthritis whose quality of life at the moment is severely impaired by the limitations of currently available technology. There are also plans to extend the Oxinium benefits to total hip replacement where the benefit to this specific patient group could be even greater."

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