Dr. Robert Whitfield explains how the Sharps Methods emerged from observing three recovery patterns after surgery: fast recovery, 6-12 month recovery, and non-responders who don't improve. His team investigated genetic markers like FUT2, COMT, and MTHFR using consumer testing and whole-genome sequencing to tailor treatments for patients stuck in recovery.
When you created the Sharps Methods, tell me a little bit about how did that come about and what is it that made you recognize that what most surgeons were doing, especially when it comes to X-Plan, may not be enough?
Yeah, it was fascinating. So we took care of these patients and more and more of the patients kept coming and we'll say a third of them got well relatively quickly after surgery. So those are the patients you would assume who had infections or ruptures or capture contractures with leakage or whatever the series of problems were. But then, you know, a third would take, you know, we'll say 6 to 12 months to get better. And then you had a third that really didn't get better, Dr. Fab, and that was a very, very difficult group to manage because they went through the surgery, they want to get better. So then we started digging deeper and we already understood there were methylation issues. And, you know, we had early things like 23andMe and we'd look at FUT2 and COMT and MTHFR. And now you can basically get the entire genome done, you know, for a relatively inexpensive amount. And then we used more and more toxicity testing.
