After receiving an FDA clearance for its mechanical tendon repair implant late last month, CoNextions Medical reported it has successfully treated its first person with the system, using it to help fix a deep cut in a patient’s little finger.
The Salt Lake City-based company’s TR device is designed to help stitch up lacerated or severed tendons in the hands, wrists or forearms of adults over age 22. It pulls together the two sides of a separated tendon with staple-like hooked anchors and connects them in between with loops of polyethylene yarn.
The system aims to provide a simpler, smaller and longer-lasting alternative to a surgeon’s suture, where sewing the tendons back together by hand has served as the standard method for hundreds of years.
CoNextions says its approach is twice as strong and can be three times as fast, using handheld, single-use deployment devices about two centimeters wide that grip the soft tissue and automatically help shape the implants to the correct size for the thickness of the native tendons.
The implant also offers a thinner profile when complete, compared to the bulky and complex manual suture knots that are used to tie off thread leftover from an operation.
The first patient was treated at Las Vegas’ Sunset Ridge Surgery Center. The company estimates that hand injuries make up more than one-fifth of emergency room visits and that cuts to the lower section of the little finger, as in this case, are some of the most common.
CoNextions said it is rolling out the TR system in the U.S. through a network of orthopedic distributors that focus on upper extremity surgeries.