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Information at ArthroplastyWatch.com meets needs of orthopaedic community
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On Feb. 1, ArthroplastyWatch.com was launched under the direction of Orthopaedics Today Europe Editorial Board member Lars Lidgren, MD, PhD,and colleagues at Lund University, in Sweden. This much-needed independent resource was developed to collect and deliver public warnings and advice about joint arthroplasty products.
During the last 14 months, when ArthroplastyWatch.com was in its beta format, Lidgren and colleagues electronically gathered more than 40,000 feeds of appropriate and relevant information regarding worldwide alerts and recall information for arthroplasty devices and procedures.
Now that the website is active, it is important to note this effort is not just another national or government authority issuing more guidelines. The ArthroplastyWatch.com project collects and organizes guidelines already issued by our local authorities in Europe and internationally and includes information from Notified Bodies, the U.K. Medicines and Health products Regulatory Agency, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and many other sources.
Faster access to information
Such a service is needed because every second week it seems that a national agency, government body or orthopaedic manufacturer issues a warning, withdrawal notice or recommendation about an arthroplasty device specific to a country or region. However, until now, these different sources of arthroplasty device safety information and warnings were not consolidated anywhere, so it took a long time for them to be disseminated to wider international audiences or to even cross borders and reach neighboring countries.
Furthermore, before the launch of ArthroplastyWatch.com, none of those data could be easily searched, but now that is possible.
The ArthroplastyWatch.com team and advisory board members rank the severity of all worldwide arthroplasty device warnings. The website displays the results in such a way that it is easy to tell the importance of each warning or piece of advice shown when using this tool.
Early warning system
ArthroplastyWatch.com also gives orthopaedic surgeons a way to learn about urgent prosthesis warnings at the same time that the media and law firms do. Having such “news” reach us faster could help slow or possibly stop misleading or incorrect information from reaching the public and our patients. Furthermore, this might make our jobs of managing the health and well-being of our patients easier because now we can be fully informed from the start of any critical arthroplasty situation that develops.
For due diligence, the findings at ArthroplastyWatch.com are evaluated by an international panel of experts in arthroplasty and all panel members are closely involved with arthroplasty surgery, registries and international regulatory authorities.
Improved surveillance
ArthroplastyWatch.com seeks to accomplish on a global level some of the same things that the British Orthopaedic Association set out to achieve more than a year ago at a national/regional level with its Beyond Compliance program — pool together diverse joint arthroplasty information to improve the surveillance process for arthroplasty and other medical devices.
Ultimately, programs like ArthroplastyWatch.com and Beyond Compliance should help us select the best and safest arthroplasty components for our patients, keep us from implanting components that could introduce more procedural risk and they could save us and our health services money.
If nothing else, these resources will keep us well informed. Those who work in the orthopaedic field should welcome ArthroplastyWatch.com and use it regularly to access and assess current and unbiased information about the implants we use.
- For more information:
- Per Kjaersgaard-Andersen, MD, is Chief Medical Editor of Orthopaedics Today Europe. He can be reached at Orthopaedics Today Europe, 6900 Grove Road, Thorofare, NJ 08086, USA; email: orthopaedics@healio.com.
Disclosure: Kjaersgaard-Andersen is a member of the advisory board of ArthroplastyWatch.com.