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INNOVATION FOR INDEPENDENCE
ISSUE 63 October/November 08 £6.95
Research team in joint failure detection hope By Dominic Musgrave AN orthopaedic research team in Liverpool are hoping to come up with a new way of detecting when joint replacements are about to come loose. The University of Liverpool team aims to develop and evaluate a simple blood test which would give warning of a problem developing before bone damage was visible on x-ray. More than 150,000 joint replacement operations are performed every year in the UK, mostly of them hip and knee, with 10 per cent failing and having to be replaced (known as revision surgery) within 10 years. The new three-year project, which is funded by a £187,000 grant from the Arthritis Research Campaign, could lead to many benefits, according to principal investigator Simon Frostick, professor of orthopaedics at the University’s Musculoskeletal Sciences Research Group. “For doctors, a good test to detect the likelihood of joint failure would allow easier and cheaper monitoring, without the need for expensive xrays,” he said. “It would also enable surgeons to focus on patients at risk of their joint becoming loose. For patients it would mean better monitoring
without hospital visit and x-rays, just a GP visit and blood test. “For researchers and manufacturers of implants it would be invaluable, as new implants could be monitored more closely, and problems and improvements identified more quickly. And for scientists it would mean that non-surgical treatments to stop the loosening process before bone damage could be developed and monitored.” Loosening of artificial joints is caused when plastic and metal fragments from the implant slowly wear away, causing inflammation and leading to the bone around the joint becoming unstable. To enable them to find out if the blood test is effective – using a marker taken from blood cells entering the tissue near the particles of metal and plastic – the Liverpool team will sample the blood of 250 people in three different patients’ groups. They are patients just before their first joint replacement, patients who have had an implant within five years, who have had no problems, and patients with implants which are problematic. All groups will be followed for the duration of the study.
People who are paralysed from the waist down are learning to walk or climb stairs thanks to a new robotic suit. Israeli high-tech company Argo Medical Technologies founder Amit Goffer created the device, which is in clinical trials in Tel Aviv's Sheba Medical Centre. His own paralysis inspired him to look for an alternative to the wheelchair for mobility. Full story: Page 4