I have a 55 y/o, 5'10", 200# female school teacher who would like my opinion on this prosthesis vs. a standard TKA. She is very inactive, as she considers "teaching 60 kids/day my exercise".
I'm concerned about the long-term outcomes for someone as young as she is. Also, given her size, she may be better off with a less flexible but more stable prosthesis.
I would never think of advising a patient on the component to be used by a surgeon for any type of joint replacement. That isn't my scope of practice; I'm not up to date on all the various options; the surgeon is the one with the tools to put in the components and the surgeon is the one with the skill in putting in the components. The Zimmer site looked gimmicky to me.
The questions she needs to ask are how many of those has the surgeon done? What is the failure rate? Does the surgeon have any kickbacks from the company? What is the typical outcome if this knee is used and how does that outcome compare to other options?
Given the patient's attitude, THERE will be the problem no matter what the surgeon uses. LOL You probably ought to spend more time on educating her on the pain and the importance of moving that knee after surgery to reduce the likelihood of needing MUA AND that research seems to be indicating that decreased quadricep strength is a factor that leads to dissatisfaction with the procedure.
We had a orthopedic surgeon come and talk us in school and he was asked this question. His impression was that it was simply a marketing ploy to get patients in their doctors door asking about it. He said the specifics on size and shape of the prosthesis is already individually tailored to the patient. The anatomical variation WITHIN each gender is greater than the average variation BETWEEN the genders.
I would definely NEVER entertain the thought of advising a patient on a type of surgery/surgical device to seek.
The patient was seen by an orthopod whom I know to be very good. He told her she needed a new knee. The patient then went to a big city surgeon, who said she would do a lot better with the Zimmer knee.
My gut tells me that the patient would do better with a standard TKA. My intention in seeking this information was to provide some questions for her to discuss to her surgeon(s). Even if I found that the long term outcomes hadn't been determined yet, I would leave that to the surgeon to discuss.
I have seen this woman for a few years for various ailments, and she really wanted my opinion because she didn't think she got enough info from the docs. I think it is likely that she just didn't know what to ask.
Curiously, I found a retired surgeon (not sure if he's doing consults or finally really retired): $279,000! WHAT the heck? Why would a retired surgeon be paid that amount? He's not in the operating room... Wow...