ALISO VIEJO, Calif., May 19, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via PRWEB - OrthAlign, Inc., a privately held U.S. based medical device company, today announced that it has launched OrthAlign Academy™ ( http://www.orthalignacademy.com ), a portal dedicated to educating surgeons and hospital staff on the use of KneeAlign® technology for Total Knee Arthroplasty surgeries.
KneeAlign provides both tibial and femoral navigation in a simple, palm-sized, single-use device and is compatible with all implant systems. It is highly accurate for overall mechanical, tibial, and femoral component alignment in TKA, comparing favorably to large-console Computer Assisted Surgery (CAS) systems.
"KneeAlign is fast, simple, and easy to use, but it's important for surgeons to know how the technology works and to receive proper training for optimized use in the OR," said David J. Mayman, M.D., Education Chairman of OrthAlign Academy and Clinical Co-Director of the Computer Assisted Surgery Center, Hospital for Special Surgery, New York, NY. "OrthAlign Academy will be an excellent resource for surgeons and hospital staff to learn all there is to know about OrthAlign technology."
In a recent U.S. study by Denis Nam, MD (Washington University, St. Louis, MO), it was found that KneeAlign decreases the incidence of outliers for tibial component alignment in both the coronal and sagittal planes, and improves the surgeon's ability to achieve a specific, intraoperative goal, compared to conventional, tibial extramedullary (EM) alignment guides in TKA. In the KneeAlign cohort, 95.7% of tibial components were within 2° of perpendicular to the tibial mechanical axis and 95% of tibial components were within 2° of a 3° posterior slope (compared to 68.1% and 72.1% in the EM cohort, respectively). This study was conducted as a randomized control trial, consisting of five different surgeons.
In another U.S. study by Dr. Nam, significant differences favoring the use of KneeAlign vs. CAS were found with regard to the accuracy of femoral component alignment, with 94.9% of patients in the KneeAlign cohort having an alignment within 2° of neutral vs. 92.5% in the CAS cohort. There was also a significant difference in overall mechanical alignment of the limb, with 92.5% of patients within 3° of a neutral mechanical axis in the KneeAlign cohort vs. 86.3% in the CAS cohort. There was no statistically significant difference in tibial component alignment.
"As more surgeons and hospital staff are adopting OrthAlign technology into their surgeries, we felt it was important to invest in education resources and make them easily accessible for the community," said James Young Kim, OrthAlign's Vice President of Marketing. "We are thrilled to be partnering with several top surgeons using OrthAlign to develop tools and programs that will provide necessary insights in optimizing the use of our technology. Ultimately, we hope that our technology and our focus on properly educating surgeons on how to use it helps to raise the standard of care for TKAs."
About OrthAlign, Inc.
OrthAlign is a privately held medical device company committed to providing orthopedic surgeons with user-friendly, cost-effective, surgical navigation products for precise alignment. We believe that our technology raises the standard of care in Total Knee and Total Hip Arthroplasty surgeries by making consistent and measurable results accessible to all surgeons, hospitals, and patients. Our strategy is to leverage this technology to provide simple and precise alignment solutions for a broad range of orthopedic procedures. For more information regarding OrthAlign, please visit http://www.orthalign.com .
"ORTHALIGN®, ORTHALIGN PLUS®, KNEEALIGN®, ORTHALIGN ACADEMY™ are [registered] trademarks of OrthAlign, Inc."
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OrthAlign, Inc. James Young Kim +1 949.525.9027
