Medicine: Nylon on the Knee

Traditional treatment for the stiffened joints of arthritis has been to scrape the ends of the bones, then wrap the exposed bone surfaces in a smooth material to keep the scar tissue from sticking the joint together again. But in the knee joint, where wear & tear is heavy, such an operation gave only short relief: as the material wore out, the joints stiffened up again.

Last week in Boston, after five years of testing and observation, Drs. John G. Kuhns and Theodore A. Potter of the Robert Breck Brigham Memorial Hospital made the first public demonstration of a better way to restore mobility to arthritic knees. Drs. Kuhns and Potter had finally found a satisfactory material that would last: nylon membrane.

In 1944, after unsuccessful tests with muscle tissue, cellophane, and finally metal bone-end coverings, the doctors tried nylon. In the 20 knee operations they have performed with nylon wrap-ups (called arthroplasty), every patient was able to walk again within three weeks. Only one failed to regain painless knee movement (because of a faulty blood supply, rather than any fault in the operation). Of the 19 others, ten have fully regained “normal range of motion.”

The new variation on an old technique can help an estimated 20,000 of the 7,000,000 arthritics in the U.S.