Bone Anchor Assembly

Project Summary

Bone anchors, sometimes referred to as “suture anchors”, are lodged into a bone of a patient and hold one or more sutures securely thereto. The sutures, in turn, securely hold soft tissue such as tendons and ligaments. Bone anchors are mostly used in various types of orthopedic shoulder surgery such as rotator cuff repair. There are more than 400,000 rotator cuff surgeries performed annually in the U.S.A.

Due to the wide variety of particular bones into which bone anchors may be lodged, the diverse optimum depths for particular bone areas require a variety of lengths of bone anchors to be available to the physician. That is, for a given bone having a given optimum depth, a bone anchor must have a certain length so that it is not too short and not too long. Thus, it can become burdensome to maintain a supply of bone anchors of different lengths for all the anticipated needs a physician may have.

Rambam orthopedic surgeons, Dr. Yaniv Keren and Dr. Yaron Berkovitz have developed a bone anchor that is suitable for implantation into bones at a variety of depths, easily supporting sutures in a fashion that avoids contact with the surrounding bone. It also eliminates the need to maintain a multitude of different bone anchor lengths.

Patent Application

PCT/IB2015/058752; Application filed: Nov. 13, 2014; National Phase filed: May 13, 2017.

Status

Rambam has been developing the device since 2014. The Nitzoz project was completed successfully. During the Nitzoz grant period, a prototype was constructed and initial experiments were carried out. At the end of the Nitzoz grant period, the project was awarded a prestigious Ministry of Health grant. Experiments are ongoing.

Bone anchors comprise 80% of the orthopedic consumables market. It is estimated that the market value of orthopedic consumables will be $475M by 2019.