Case 3: 3D Partial Ankle Replacement (2018)

Performed by Dr. Adam Perler in 2018. This was a young patient who presented with a large defect inside her ankle joint involving part of her talus. Traditionally this would have been treated by cutting her inner ankle bone, flipping it down and a placing a replacement cadaver bone segment.

This is a very technically demanding surgery and it is very difficult to get proper joint contours. Although these can be successful, the failure rate is about 50% leaving a total ankle replacement or joint fusion as her only option. This pathway would require two additional surgeries (hardware removal and then either a fusion or replacement).

Dr. Perler teamed up with Additive Orthopaedics to design the first partial ankle joint replacement that is placed from a frontal approach without needing to cut inner ankle bone away. This was complete with specialty PSI (patient specific instrumentation) that allowed for accurate placement of the device. This will keep all future reconstruction options open and allow for a single staged reconstruction in the future if ever needed.