This isn’t exactly an infectious disease related post, but I’m pretty intrigued- having two ACL repairs and two meniscus repairs, this stuff is pretty important to me!
A few senators are pushing for the creation of an artificial joint registry- surgery patients that have been given artificial joints or had artificial devices implanted in them would be tracked and monitored to ensure that no defective devices are being used, or to just rate the effectiveness of the devices implanted. The system is designed to “track how patients fare, reduce unnecessary surgeries and weed out inferior products”, all part of Obama’s new take on healthcare: “comparative effectiveness” reviews in order to identify the procedures and devices that work best. Funding hasn’t been secured yet, but a registry like this has been implemented in other countries with high success rates and patient satisfaction.
“The types of problems associated with not having a registry were highlighted last year by an episode involving a Zimmer hip component called the Durom cup. Though some doctors warned Zimmer the device was failing at an unacceptable rate, the company kept selling it for months while it reviewed patient records in an attempt to determine how frequently the problem was occurring.”
We’ll see if it gets enough funding to go through!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/business/11device.html?_r=1&ref=health
Enjoy.
Kaitlyn
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