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How total hip manufacturers lost their way by eliminating right/left stems designs - BoneChat 66.

10 Mar 2025 · 0 min

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Orthopedic experts argue that hip manufacturers abandoned right/left-specific stem designs to cut inventory costs, sacrificing fit quality. They cite Stryker's robot for knee surgery being widely copied, weak IP protection, and a shift toward mid-length stems like Actus and DePuy's Replica as industry compromises.

So the industry has lost its way trying to reduce inventory. It sounds like, um, nobody wants rights and lefts.
They started that way, and I guess it's customary. And like everything, um, they're a bit like sheep, the big companies, you know. Stryker gets a robot for total knee, so the others have all got to get a robot for total knee. Well, they copy each other, so presumably either there's no, uh, IP protection, or else someone's licensed it to all the companies. I don't know, but it's not, uh, it's not unique. And everyone's got a mid-length stem now. They've all gone— no one was ever really going to go to the short stems like the, the Optimus or the current Mini Hip, so they went halfway there. They went from karai halfway to a short stem with a mid-length stem, which is what we have with the Actus. But, uh, uh, It'll start out right at the start of the project, no left and right, 'cause we gotta save money.
Yeah, so I think there was a stem that DePuy had back in the day, maybe called the Replica, that I think tried to do something a little bit like this. And one other thing I wanna add is that your point about the navigation software, the Velus Hip Navigation doesn't even have a lateral view. It's leg length and offset, and you are looking at pre-op, post-op, or intra-op, operative side or operative compared to contralateral. And there is no lateral view involved at all.