Easier-to-Use, Stronger Nitinol Extremity Nail Launched

Kalamazoo, Michigan-based Stryker Corporation has launched its EasyFuse Dynamic Compression System, which uses a nickel titanium alloy metal—nitinol. Stryker selected this material due to its strength and shape recovery and is aiming to reduce surgical complexity and reduce waste in the OR.

According to the company, the EasyFuse Dynamic Compression System features:

• Strength: Extra wide staple bridge designed to distribute forces and provide consistent implant strength
• Efficiency: Universal, sterile packed instrumentation decreases surgical complexity and reduces operating room material waste
• Ease of Use: Intuitively designed inserter provides surgeons with confident implant deployment while also allowing quick and easy implant reloading if desired.

“Over the last five years, staples have emerged as efficient and effective implants for foot and ankle surgeons to use for both simple and complex midfoot arthrodesis,” said Dr. Carroll Jones, an orthopedic surgeon at OrthoCarolina and design surgeon. “The attributes of the EasyFuse System represent the next generation of best-in-class staple technology.”

Michael Rankin, VP of Marketing and Medical Education for Stryker’s Foot & Ankle business unit, told OTW, “For the past several years, our existing nitinol staple systems have seen steadily climbing sales as many of our customers have begun expanding their usage outside of the forefoot.”

“In contrast to the forefoot, the higher demand applications of the mid and hindfoot call for more robust, stable implants to handle those increased loads. We’ve also experienced increased requests for sterile packed, single-use surgical instruments, particularly from our ambulatory surgery center customers. For these reasons, now is the perfect time to launch EasyFuse Dynamic Compression System.”

Marketing Eureka

“There is one moment that the team looks back on and has a good laugh, added Rankin. “The EasyFuse Staple Removal and Replacement feature was stumbled upon by a couple of the engineers at one of the development labs. The design engineers noticed the speed and ease with which the EasyFuse implants were able to be removed from bone, and then placed again in a new location using the same single-use insertion device. With many nitinol staple systems that offer sterile instrument packs, once the staple has been deployed it’s very difficult to reload back onto the insertion device should a surgeon have the need to. They had a eureka moment that this could be used as a great promotional feature for the system.”

“When launching the final product of the EasyFuse Staple, we received feedback from surgeons on their experience with the system, which validated that our design did benefit our customers with an easy implant removal and replacement feature.”