Glue in You: Kryptonite & Heart-Surgery

Doctors can now use glue to aid bone healing in open-heart surgery after a pilot study of 20 patients in Canada today. Now if you get heart surgery, they won't have to stitch wires into your breastplate (according to this guy ScienceDaily talked to, it can be pretty terrible when the wire breaks - squeezing toothpaste and breathing was understandably torture). Now while I couldn't find any information on how often the wire breaks, this glue is great anyway since it helps you heal faster.

The study was also supported by the company that created the glue - Doctor's Research Group, founded by Richard Deslauriers (degrees in mechanical engineering and medicine) in 1997, based in Connecticut, who started the company in an old stamping factory with a couple engineers. Now they've got 600+ people on just the sales team, according to this venture summary. The glue, called Kryptonite, was developed in 2005 and has been approved in 31 countries including Canada, the USA and Europe. This should be good news for us when heart disease is still the leading cause of death (although it might hand that title over to cancer - "malignant neoplasms" - someday), according to the CDC:


Bone glue isn't a new thing, but apparently Kryptonite's 18 times stronger than one brand of bone glue on the market, PMMA (which gets hot when used). There's also Plexur P Biocomposite (cleared by FDA in 2007) and Stryker Simplex P Bone Cement (used in orthopedics since 1973).

It's not clear why Kryptonite was the first to be used for heart surgery but the glues do differ in little ways: For example Plexur's been used more for bone graft extending and bone filling, made from phosphate, calcium and proteins, whereas Kryptonite's made from fatty acids and calcium carbonate, the same compound that pearls and eggshells are made of. Plus applications of these things are done step by step (ie Plexur was used for bone grafts, then ankle surgeries, and then applied to the spine last year), so maybe DRG beat everyone else to the chase.

DRG says sales for Krytonite have been 1 million in Europe but they're private, so there's not much data available. Plus they don't even have a website up. But according to an interview back in 1999, they've got some other patents for a mishmash of products with similarly interesting names:

• Echoplus digital signal processing stethoscope allows doctors to record heartbeats and preserve them for comparisons during future patient visits. Physicians can also slow or speed recordings to better observe patterns.

• The only combination bone screw and suture anchor system, Sherlock, which reduces time in the operating room.

• The Piranha self-drilling bone screw.

• The Lockjaw 15-minute intermaxillary fixation system, a flexible direct bonding arch bar, for use in open-mouth surgery, which reduces operating-room time and reduces exposure to infection.

• The Hummer combination reflex hammer and tuning fork

It should be interesting to see where else we can apply bone glue, but for right now I'm glad it's out there as one more thing in the doctor's toolbox when they're splitting you open.