Orchid Orthopedic Solutions (Orchid) is moving into the Chinese orthopedic market by offering Vacuum Titanium Plasma Spray (VPS) coating services at their Suzhou, China, facility in 2016. According to the March 8, 2016 news release, “This expansion of capabilities supports Orchid’s strategy to provide full value stream services to the local market in Asia and compliments their current hydroxylapatite (HA) coating services.”
Orchid Orthopedic Solutions Enters Chinese Market

“We are excited to be able to provide VPS services to our local customers in China and beyond. Orchid has a reputation for good quality coatings throughout the world and we will continue this standard at our Suzhou facility, ” says Christopher Norbye, International Executive Vice President for Orchid outside the U.S. “This endeavor supports our goal of building full value stream services on three continents. We anticipate adding more capabilities in the future depending on the needs of the local market.”
Orchid’s Chief Representative (China) Oliver Wu told OTW, “We have seen increasing interest and demands from the Chinese market on our VPS process, now that we have a HA coating facility set up in Suzhou, China. VPS coating already has a majority share of the cementless joint recon market and we see it is the right time for many local customers to align with high quality. With this added capability, Orchid China is ready to grow together with the market by offering better solutions and services to our customers.”
“First, we will make sure the technology and quality assurance in our Suzhou facility is up to the world-class Orchid standards and work more closely with our customers in order for them to offer better products to the end market. We will continue to add more capabilities as needed by the customers in China, making good use of Orchid’s experience and world-wide resources.”

Discussion
This is a fascinating development. In my practice we've seen similar outcomes with the revised protocol. The key differentiator seems to be patient selection criteria. Has anyone else noticed the correlation with BMI thresholds?
Great point. I'd push back slightly on the conclusion, the sample size in the cited study is too small to draw population-level inferences. That said, the directional signal is compelling and worth a larger RCT.
We implemented a similar approach last year. Early results are promising but we're still gathering 12-month follow-up data. Happy to share our protocol if anyone is interested.
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