Zimmer MIS Quad-Sparing Knee Replacement
WARSAW, IN?? January 10, 2006 – Zimmer Holdings, Inc. (NYSE and SWX: ZMH), a leader in the orthopaedics industry, announced today that its Minimally Invasive Solutions??? (MIS??? ) Quad-Sparing??? Knee Replacement Procedure is the subject of an orthopaedic journal article that concludes that Zimmer minimally invasive knee replacement techniques provide superior economic and patient clinical benefits…
…Thomas M. Coon, M.D., describes a number of benefits associated with minimally invasive knee procedures, such as reductions in hospital resource utilization – including reductions in hospital length of stay and in blood transfusions – and improvements in immediate post-operative mobility and range of motion. Dr. Coon is the director of the Orthopedic Surgical Institute, Red Bluff, California. Co-authors are Alfred J. Tria, Jr., M.D., New Brunswick, New Jersey; Carlos Lavernia, MD, Miami, Florida; and Leon Randall, RN, Red Bluff, California…
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“The clinical and economic benefits of minimally invasive hip replacement have been established in the literature, and we believed that minimally invasive knee replacement would produce the same positive results,” said Dr. Coon. “In a group of 159 patients we evaluated, our findings clearly support that thesis – we saw blood transfusion requirements drop from 34% to 4% and early range of motion increase from 48.6 degrees to 68.6 degrees. Patients walked three times further at the third post-op day – 176 feet versus 58 feet. Length of hospital stay dropped two and a half days during the initial evaluation of this procedure, from 5.9 days to 3.4 days, and in my more recent experience the average length of stay is just over one day.”