Cat’s New Knee an Ortho-PET-ic Innovation - East Idaho News

Cat’s New Knee an Ortho-PET-ic Innovation

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Getty H 012812 TabbyCat jpg?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1327758684684Comstock/Thinkstock(RALEIGH, N.C.) — A photogenic 20-pound orange tabby was resting comfortably in an intensive care unit on Saturday following pioneering replacement of a cancer-weakened knee by veterinary surgeons at North Carolina State University whose work could advance the field of human prosthetics.

Veterinarians were monitoring the recuperation of Cyrano, a 10-year-old cat, “and if things continue to go well, he could go home in the next few days,” said university spokesperson Tracey Peake. The School of Veterinary Medicine has been providing periodic updates on a blog.

Cyrano got a new lease on life thanks to top-tier veterinary care. He underwent life-saving chemotherapy and radiation for bone cancer at Colorado State University in 2010. However, while the thousands of dollars of treatments put Cyrano in remission, the combined ravages of his disease and treatment side effects left him with bone deterioration in his back leg and knee, causing pain and restricting his movements.

On Thursday, a 10-member surgical team led by Dr. Denis Marcellin-Little, an orthopedic surgeon at NCSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine in Raleigh, N.C., spent hours giving Cyrano a customized implant designed and created during six months of collaborative work among U.S. and German veterinarians and engineers. They fashioned the implant, about the size of a tube of lip balm, from cobalt chromium and plastic.

Marcellin-Little has described the implant as being “as good as the implants used in human knee replacements.”

The high-tech operation allowed Cyrano to escape amputation, the goal sought by his owner, Sandy Lerner, a founder of Cisco Systems, and owner of a farm in northern Virginia. Marcellin-Little and his fellow implant developers hope Cyrano’s surgery will help make the procedure more available and affordable for other pets.

Marcellin and engineering professor Ola Harryson couldn’t put a figure on the total cost of Cyrano’s experimental surgery, because 14 people and several companies donated time and materials for the research. However, Lerner paid $20,000 of the total cost, Peake said.

The collaboration has implications for artificial limbs to help “people who have lost limbs to disease, accidents, or combat,” said Dave Green, the top spokesman for NCSU’s veterinary school.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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