Four years ago, at the age of 39, I was diagnosed with a torn meniscus in my right knee. That was just the beginning of my painful, six surgery nightmare. (Thanks to Arthrosurface, however, my nightmare has a happy ending!)
As the owner and Chief Instructor of two of the largest martial arts schools in Maryland, it was imperative for me both professionally (for my livelihood) and personally (martial arts has been my passion for the last 25 years) that I be able to continue doing martial arts. At the time of my torn meniscus diagnosis, I was teaching karate six days per week, four to five hours per day.
I immediately had my first of what would end up totaling five failed surgeries. The surgeon first tried to fix and tack down my meniscus. When that didn’t work, the surgeon took a good portion of my meniscus out. That definitely didn’t work. Now my knee was bone on bone, which left me in excruciating pain every second of every day. My fifth surgery was a meniscus and cartilage transplant, which was extremely painful and took over a year to recover. Because of my age (the transplant surgery works best on younger patients), the surgery just left me in more pain than I was in before the surgery.
My outlook was pretty bleak about ever being out of pain. Although I was still teaching my regular martial arts schedule, I was in unbearable pain every day. I learned to hide my pain well from my karate students and I found the adrenaline of doing martial arts actually helped mask the pain for a while each night. I could not, however, hide it from my husband and kids. They knew the agony I was in, day after day, year after year. I’d come home from work most nights and sit on my kitchen floor in tears from the pain.
At that point, my surgeon recommended that I have a partial knee replacement. It was a huge decision for me --if I went through with having the partial knee replacement, I’d have to give up my passion and career. My new knee wouldn’t be able to take the stress of doing martial arts and would break apart over a short period of time. I lost sleep at night trying to decide between living in pain the rest of my life and giving up what I love to do.
Then, one of my students told me about a surgeon he knew who was performing a new procedure. The surgeon’s name was Barry Waldman and the procedure was Arthrosurface. I researched everything I could on both, and I figured that I had nothing to lose by consulting with Dr. Waldman. The day I met with Dr. Waldman was the day my life changed. Within a couple of weeks, he had me in surgery for the Arthrosurface on my knee.
Although I consider myself a very optimistic person, I must admit that I had absolutely zero expectations for any chance of success with this surgery. I had been so disappointed from my last five failed surgeries that I didn’t want to get my hopes up. In my heart, I honestly believed that I would be in pain for the rest of my life.
Just about two months after my Arthrosurface surgery was when my nightmare ended. Not only was I surprised at how easy and quickly the recovery and rehab was from the surgery (I did it by myself at home), I was shocked when I woke up one day and realized that the constant, intense, 9-10 level pain that I endured every day for four years was actually gone. It’s now been seven months since my surgery and I’m happy to say that now when I come home from teaching karate every night, instead of sitting on my kitchen floor in tears from the pain in my knee, I’m down both knees wrestling with my dogs. Thanks Arthrosurface-you saved my life!

JE, age 43
Columbia, MD

UniCAP™ Partial Knee Resurfacing

"Fifteen years ago while playing football at school I injured my right knee and tore my ligament. A few years later while water skiing I did the same thing to my left knee. Of course, I knew that if I wanted to keep doing sports my ligaments needed to be fixed so I had both repaired. Physical activity is part of my life. Not only do I ski, play football and do sports like ultimate frisbee but I have a very physical job where I have to move equipment around an area the size of three football fields. I was always able to manage my pain but then a few years ago my knees started to become painful when I did activities for extended periods of time. As a matter of fact the pain got so bad that after a fantastic ski week in Tahoe I could barely walk. Even though it was tough I always managed.

Then last year things changed. While skiing with my daughter I fell and could hear a pop in both my knees. I thought, “that’s it I’ve torn my ligaments again and now I’m going to need a joint replacement.” The thought of a total knee scared the heck out of me. You would think I would be OK with it since I work at a hospital where they perform these operations everyday but it just seemed to be such a big operation. Nonetheless, I had my knees checked out and sure enough the damage to my cartilage was so significant that just fixing the ligaments wasn’t going to help much.

Thankfully, one of the doctors at our hospital has been working on minimally invasive surface replacements in the knee, so when the new system became available I decided to check it out. The basic idea was to just fill the damaged areas with new surfaces that matched my own anatomy so I could buy some time. I went ahead with the operation and not only was it better than I could have imagined but I was back at work, virtually pain free and with great range of motion in my knee after only 12 days!! For me, the defining moment came while I was cutting my lawn. I was mowing the grass when all of a sudden I realized that for the first time that I could remember I didn’t have any pain in my knee!!

It’s a weird feeling to realize that you are better because you don’t feel something but for me it just felt great. The whole reason I decided to try this new knee system from Arthrosurface was because I wanted to preserve what I have for as long as I can keep it. Because I now have no pain and normal motion it just feels like I got another chance."

-R.F., Ohio

Shoulder

A few years after a bout with Leukemia, I developed avascular necrosis in both shoulders. They caught it early enough that arthroscopic surgery seemed to solve the problem, but five years later, I felt a familiar pain in my right shoulder. The doctor confirmed that a piece of my shoulder was basically dead, but he only offered the same arthroscopic surgery again or a full shoulder replacement. I was particularly disappointed because I had just learned to kiteboard, which is similar to wakeboarding except that you’re being pulled by a large kite. Needless to say, shoulders are required.
I was lucky to run into my previous surgeon, who was retired, but he referred me to Dr. Joseph Fernandez. Dr. Fernandez realized that the arthroscopy wouldn’t work this time, and that my condition wasn’t bad enough to warrant a replacement. After researching different options, he chose partial resurfacing as the best treatment for me.
The surgery was in 2004 and one year later, I completed an Olympic Distance Triathlon. Shortly after that, I got back into kiteboarding, wakeboarding, surfing and recently scuba diving. My shoulder still feels great.Here's my picture with my HemiCAP Shoulder!

-D.D., Miami, FL

Shoulder

About twenty years ago I had a nasty fall while skiing in New Hampshire and thought that I had broken my right shoulder. After a few days, the pain subsided and I continued to ski in the winter and play golf in the summer. Over the years, however, the pain in my right shoulder continued to grow to such a degree that it started to limit not only my passion for playing golf, but also my hobby of working in the garden. It finally got to the point where I started to hear and use the terms “frozen shoulder”. As an accountant and as a daily user of computers, I started experiencing sharp pains that would “freeze” the use of my arm.
After a couple of cortisone shots, which had no effect whatsoever on the relief of pain, and a subsequent surgical procedure to “clean” off the spurs in my shoulder, I had, what was called “shoulder replacement surgery” during which time, the HemiCAP shoulder implant was inserted.
I am glad to report that after three and one half months of physical therapy, I played nine holes of golf to “test” the surgically repaired shoulder. To my immense satisfaction, I had absolutely no pain in the shoulder. I decided then to start “pushing” the shoulder in the garden by lifting and moving some rocks and build a wall. Again I felt no pain. I have played a few more rounds of 18 holes golf since the surgery, and I can honestly say that I feel no pain and I feel extremely satisfied with the surgical procedure.

-A.D., Nashua, NH

Shoulder

"Being a former Senior Powerlifting Champion and owner of a prestigious power-lifting gym it is crucial to my work and life to be able to use my shoulder. Over the years I have spent a lot of time dealing with different injuries but this was the worst. For the last 11 years I have had to live everyday with pain in my shoulder and in the last few years it got so bad that I couldn't sleep more than a few hours at a time without being awakened by the pain. In fact many times when I would drive my truck, I would have to use my left arm to change the gears or even the radio station because it hurt so much to use my shoulder.

I went to see several of the top shoulder surgeons and they all told me the same thing "you need a total shoulder replacement" For me, that meant that I wouldn't be able to lift again and that just wasn't an option. Finally someone referred me to Dr. Miniaci at the Cleveland Clinic. He had worked with Arthrosurface on this new device called the HemiCAP implant that would just resurface one side of my joint. Using the HemiCAP implant on one side and an allograft on my other side he was able to reconstruct my shoulder without compromising any of the muscles and tendons. Not only did the pain go away in a matter of weeks but for the first time in over 10 years my shoulder works like normal. Given my history that's nothing short of fantastic!! My pain is gone, I sleep through the night and I am back to full time lifting and working out. Without my surgeon and this new technology from Arthrosurface I would have had to stop doing what I love the most- lifting and training athletes to get powerful and strong."

-L.S., Ohio

Patello-Femoral

"Four years ago, I had an accident at work. A large 20lb rock fell right on my kneecap and since then my life has been miserable. My first surgery was right after my accident. The surgeon took out some damaged tissue and cleaned up the inside of my joint. It helped a bit but then the pain got worse. I went from playing softball, working 80 hours a week and being very active, to being so debilitated that I couldn't walk up and down stairs without a lot of pain. Finally, I went to see another doctor and he performed a different surgery. This time they realigned my knee and put some tissue grafts into the injured area on my kneecap. Unfortunately, that didn't work either. At this point I had been out of work for two years. I was starting to lose hope of ever going back to work since nothing had worked, the pain was constant, and the only other option was getting a joint replacement.
Just when I thought there was no other choice my doctor called me to tell me about a new technology from Arthrosurface. He had already used it in the knee and shoulder with great results. Now they had something for kneecap so I went to find out what it was. I was surprised at how simple it was. The idea was to replace the damaged area with a contoured implant. What made the implants special was that they were designed to fit the anatomy of the patient.
It's now been about 6 weeks after surgery and for the first time in 4 years I have no more pain. Walking, biking, going up and down stairs are all things that I can do again, now without pain. I went from taking pain meds everyday to taking none. Now, I even sleep through the night. At the end of this month I go back to work starting with a desk job. If things keeping going well after I finish my rehab program then I may even go back to my old job. That would be fantastic.
If my doctor had told me that 2 months after my surgery I would be pain-free and working again I would have said it was impossible. Today it's a reality. The Arthrosurface technology has given me back my life. I couldn't be happier."

-D.C., Boston, MA

Femoral Condyle**

At first, my surgeon suggested I get a microfracture. My surgeon told me that with microfracture the rehab was going to be fairly long. This was an issue for me as I am very active and wanted to continue to play tennis. After discussing several options my surgeon suggested I might be a good candidate for the HemiCAP implant from Arthrosurface. The implant is custom fit to cover the damaged area and since it is metal I could put my weight on it much earlier. Being able to move around early was very appealing to me so I decided to have surgery the next month. After surgery I went home to start my rehabilitation. I still had pain at first but each day it got better and by the end of the first week the worst pain was gone. Even though the whole rehab program took only about 8 weeks, by 6 weeks almost all my pain was gone.

Of course, I started to play tennis as soon as my doctor said it was O.K. which was about 8 weeks after surgery. Recently I went on a one week bike tour in Germany. This was the first time that I was going to exercise my knee everyday for several hours so I was a little concerned. It was great! No pain, my legs felt strong and the best thing was that no one could tell I even had surgery only a year before. When I first had the pain in my knee I was very concerned. I thought I might not be able to exercise and be as active as I liked. With the HemiCAP implant I have everything I wished for. The rehab was short, it didn’t really affect my work, I can play tennis, hike and ride my bike, all with no pain. The HemiCAP implant sounded like a good idea when I first heard of it but now I know it is. I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.

P.R., Germany

Foot/Ankle

“For the last two years the pain in my foot got progressively worse, so much so, that I started to change the way I walked just so I could avoid walking on my toe. When I started walking on the outside of my foot I ended up getting neck and back pain as well, which just made matters worse. I’m a carpenter and so I spend a lot of time going up ladders, bending, kneeling and reaching into difficult places. The pain got so bad I could no longer do my job and that’s when I decided to go see a specialist. When I first saw my surgeon he told me that my only option to get rid of the pain was a fusion. Even though it sounded pretty drastic, I decided to have the surgery. Being a carpenter I am very familiar with the concept of fusing things together and so I knew that I would end up loosing most of the movement in my toe. Not a great option, but at that point there was nothing else that would take care of my pain.

As fate would have it, the day before my surgery, my surgeon advised me that there might be another option. He told me about this new product called the HemiCAP which was an implant that would replace the arthritic part of my joint and give me a new surface. I could avoid getting a fusion, keep the movement of my toe and if it worked as planned I would get pain relief. Even though it was new for the toe, the HemiCAP implant had already been used successfully in several hundred patients in the hip, shoulder and knee. Deciding to try it wasn’t a difficult decision, especially given my other choice, fusion. Well it’s now been a few months and I couldn’t be happier. I can bend, jump, walk up ladders and after 6 weeks I was walking 3 miles a day, 5 days a week!! Two weeks after surgery my swelling was down, my pain was virtually gone and I had the movement back in my toe. The strangest thing was that I had to learn how to walk on my toe again. Seven weeks after surgery I was working doing all those things I hadn’t been able to do for years and the best part was that I didn’t have any more pain in my neck or back either. When I decided to have surgery I never expected that it would turn out this good. The fact that I have no more pain and still have my movement is just fantastic.”

-J.R., Pennsylvania

-G.D. Pennsylvania

-K.G., Florida