How Does it Work?
How does HyProCure Work?
HyProCure stabilizes the ankle bone on the heel bone to maintain the alignment of the joint surfaces.
The “head” of the implant is designed to stabilize the ankle bone at the axis of motion between the ankle and heel bones. This is the only part of the implant that comes into contact with the ankle and heel bones. The upper-back portion touches the ankle bone and the lower-front portion touches the heel bone. The weight of the body from above pushes down on the ankle bone when weight is placed on the foot. The majority of those forces will act on the many large joint surfaces between the ankle bone and the heel and arch bones. There is only a minimal force acting on the HyProCure implant. It can look very scary to see an x-ray of the HyProCure in someone’s foot as if HyProCure will break the ankle bone in half. This is just an optical illusion because of the actual minimal forces pushing on HyProCure. “Knock-on-wood” as they say, after more than 15 years of clinical use in both children and adults, there has never been a broken ankle or heel bone because of HyProCure.
HyProCure does not “lift” up the ankle bone, rather it prevents the ankle bone from displacing down and forward.
This may seem like semantics but there is a big difference. The majority of forces act on the joint surfaces and there is only a very slight or minimal force acting on the implant.
To see the difference click the pictures below:
While HyProCure may look like a screw it is important to note that it is not.
The entire procedure is considered a “soft-tissue” procedure because there is no drilling or reshaping of the bones. Previous sinus tarsi implants had a high removal rate because of inadequate soft tissue anchoring. HyProCure will be anchored into the most stable soft tissues deep within the sinus tarsi space where there is the least amount of ankle bone motion. The tissues within the space are cut to allow the insertion of HyProCure. Immediately after they are cut the healing process begins to “regrow” the cut ends of the tissue. This is an amazing process because the tissues heal around the threads of HyProCure acting as the anchor. It is the tissue on-growth that prevents HyProCure from backing out. Unfortunately, there are situations where the tissues are very worn out due to the years of the ankle bone grinding on them, and there are even situations where the tissues are non-existent. There is a reason why there are no holes in the threaded portion for tissue in-growth. There are situations where HyProCure has to be removed. It is easier for HyProCure removal without tissue in-growth. Having tissue on-growth is less-invasive or atraumatic over a more tissue-traumatic removal of ingrowth.
A very important question that has to be asked and answered is what are the long-term issues of having a HyProCure stent in your foot/feet?
Well, first of all, we have to ask, what are the long-term issues of not having a HyProCure in your foot? That answer is easy; they are devasting tissue disease to the joints, ligaments, tendons, nerves, and muscles within your feet, knees, hips, and back. Go to the symptoms of Ankle Bone Instability/RTTJD to learn more and see the hundreds of scientific papers published showing what happens when you don’t accurately treat this disease.
What are the known negative effects of HyProCure on your feet? There have only been reports of temporary periods of pain, abnormal walking while getting used to the new hindfoot alignment, the need to change the diameter-size of the implant to a smaller/larger size, the need for permanent removal. There has not been any situation that we are aware of where a patient required a more aggressive surgery as a result of HyProCure. There have been situations where patients who were told their options were a major hindfoot reconstructive surgery where the bones needed to be cut, shifted, and/or to have the joints removed and fused. Many times, those individuals chose to have HyProCure placed to delay that kind of surgery, although it is possible that the results were not ideal, and the patient then had to have the more aggressive surgery, but at no fault of HyProCure. There is an entire section devoted to the risks and less-than-desired situations in The HyProCure Procedure section of this website. Read More >>>