EAST PROVIDENCE, RI (WJAR)— “It’s called an alternate bearing surface, called Pyrocarbon,” University Orthopedics’ Dr. E. Scott Paxton, MD recently told Channel 10’s Barbara Morse.
Last year, he became the first in Rhode Island to use this new shoulder implant.
Carbon is the same base element as diamonds. But that’s where the similarities end.
This actually needs to be heated really really high, thousands and thousand of degrees,” explained Paxton. “And so it hits the sweet spot on how hard the substance is that matches bone really nicely.”
Dr. Paxton performed Rhode Island’s first humeral head resurfacing using Stryker’s Tornier Pyrocarbon Humeral Head at University Orthopedics’ East Bay Surgical Center in April 2024. He has performed many more to date, all of which have yielded excellent outcomes thus far.
In addition to speaking with Dr. Paxton, Barbara Morse interviewed Gerry Corneau, of Westerly. Corneau, who became Dr. Paxton’s second patient to receive the implant, shared his surgical experience.
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Pyrocarbon is an advanced, biocompatible bearing material that has been utilized internationally for a variety of orthopedic procedures since the early 1990s and in shoulder cases since 2013. Stryker’s Tornier Pyrocarbon Humeral Head is the only pyrocarbon implant cleared for shoulder hemiarthroplasty in the United States, receiving FDA approval at the end of 2022.
About E. Scott Paxton, MD
E. Scott Paxton, MD is a member of the Division of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery and an Associate Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. He completed fellowship training in the treatment of problems of the shoulder and elbow at the renowned Rothman Institute in Philadelphia where he trained with many of the world’s leaders in shoulder and elbow surgery.
The typical problems that he evaluates and treats include rotator cuff tears and impingement, shoulder and elbow instability and dislocations, shoulder and elbow arthritis, shoulder fractures (humerus, glenoid, scapula, and clavicle), elbow fractures, malunions and nonunions of these fractures, tendon injuries of the shoulder and elbow, labral tears, throwing injuries and other sports injuries of the upper extremity.