BOULDER — Like a lot of active Coloradans, Duane Duggan ended up with a particular problem. That would be difficulty with those crucial joints that allow him to bend his legs.
Duggan is a longtime skier and loves ski racing and trail running — all of which are hard on your knees, he says. “I had had seven knee surgeries. My knees were getting more worn out.”
Duggan had been considering knee replacement for the past 10 years, but he wanted to wait until he was closer to 60. Yet his knees kept getting worse.
“The last ski season it got to where I could barely take a run without so much pain that I wanted to quit,” Duggan says.
He began researching knee replacement and found out about a knee made by the company , which uses a 3D printer to create a customized knee that replicates the patient’s own, rather than using an “off-the-shelf” knee. To make the 3D-printed knee, the company works from a CT scan of the patient’s knee.
“It’s customized to you, rather than your bones being made to match the standard part,” Duggan says.
Then Duggan found a local orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Michael Wertz, who practices out of Boulder Community and Avista hospitals, at bouldercustomknee.com. (ConforMIS lists , from Colorado Springs to Greeley, who use their implants.) As it happened in the small town that Boulder sometimes seems to be, Duggan has ski-raced with Wertz’s sister.
“When it turned out he did the type of procedure I wanted to use, it had a match-made-in-heaven feeling,” Duggan says.
Wertz started using the 3D-printed, customized knees about four months ago.
“What it comes down to (in knee replacement) is trying to reproduce normal motion,” Wertz says. “If you have a better fit of an implant and restore mechanical axis and get that to a very close tolerance of what is perfect, I think it’s going to last longer and function better.”
Wertz adds that a knee replacement that fits well also means less pain.
“People notice it,” Wertz says. “Their knees feel pretty good a little quicker than with an off-the-shelf knee. They get up and are walking on it right away.”
Duggan had a knee replaced on Sept. 17 and the other done on Nov. 19. He had been in so much pain that even right after his first surgery he felt better.
“I had so much bone-on-bone pain. Immediately after surgery, that bone-on-bone pain was gone,” he said. “It still hurt for awhile, but it was … not quite so sharp.”
Three months out from his first replacement, he says that knee is close to 100 percent. He is still rehabbing his second surgery, which was made more complicated by the number of previous surgeries on his knee that had left scar tissue. Duggan was well prepared for the surgery. He rode 20 to 80 miles daily to make sure he was in optimal shape.
“There’s no pain in biking. I wanted my legs to be fit to stand on after they’ve been hacked on,” he says.
The customization of the knee included not only the knee, but the “hacking,” or rather the precise cuts the surgeon makes in the bone to attach the knee. Along with the knee come customized ijigs, which show the precise cuts the surgeon needs to make.
“The cuts match perfectly to the location you want them to be and the angle,” Wertz says. “The biggest thing is all this is done beforehand by computer. You know the alignment. They send you a surgical plan, how much to expect to take off each area of bone. You can double check after you have made the cuts by measuring the piece you are taking off. It comes off to be pretty exact.”
Insurance typically covers the cost, the same as it would with traditional knee replacement, although the patient theoretically might have to pay the cost of the CT scan.
Wertz believes the surgery will catch on here, with the area’s large number of people who want to remain active into their 70s and beyond.
“They truly do fit remarkably well,” Wertz says. “When you’re putting them in surgically, they’re amazingly congruent.”
Cindy Sutter: 303-473-1335, sutterc@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/cindy_sutter
