2018 Highlights

Boris, who is 71, suddenly stopped talking during the drive. When Benjamin realized something was wrong with his grandfather, he grabbed the steering wheel to avoid crashing and guided the car to the side of the highway to call 911.

“I started to scream and scream, and he didn’t respond at all,” Benjamin recalls. “I was scared, so I called my mom and she told me to call 911. I pressed all the buttons, and I’m not sure what stopped the car.”

“I lost everything. I couldn’t hear anything, and I could only see from the left side,” says Boris.

An ambulance arrived to take him to UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, MA, where he was seen by Dr. Ajit Puri, an experienced neurointervention specialist who uses minimally invasive techniques to treat stroke, brain aneurysms and carotid stenosis.

“Boris had a massive stroke where the main artery of the brain, called the middle cerebral artery, was blocked by a big clot,” says Dr. Puri. “We call that a large vessel occlusion. He could not move the entire right side of his body. He could not speak at all, and he was having a severe gaze preference,” which indicates eye movement limitation.

Boris’s best chance for recovery with a large vessel occlusion was to have the clot removed using a stent retriever, a minimally invasive procedure that is now the standard of care for large vessel blockages. Dr. Puri guided Stryker’s Trevo Retriever from Boris’s femoral artery in his leg up to the brain, where the retriever ensnared the clot. Dr. Puri was then able to remove the retriever with the clot back through a catheter.

With Dr. Puri’s extensive experience using the stent retriever, the procedure, from the time the catheter was inserted, only took 21 minutes to restore blood flow to the brain. As a result, Boris was soon able to move the right side of his body and his speech is now back to normal.

“I feel lucky, because if it weren’t for Ben, if I was alone in the car—I’m pretty sure I was going 65 miles an hour—I would crash somewhere,” says Boris.

Every second counts
Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in the U.S. “Getting emergency help as soon as you recognize the signs of stroke for you or a loved one is critical,” says Dr. Puri. In fact, patients can lose nearly two million brain neurons every minute until the clot is removed.

Boris was able to avoid long-term brain damage, thanks to Benjamin’s actions and the quick response at the hospital, including the use of advanced treatments like the Trevo Retriever.

Until recently, the use of a stent retriever to remove a clot was limited to the first six hours after an ischemic stroke, which meant patients seeking help outside of this time window faced severe disability and even death. In early 2018 Stryker’s Trevo Retriever became the first and only thrombectomy device to receive FDA clearance to significantly reduce disability in patients up to 24 hours from symptom onset. To learn more about the impact of these changes visit Stryker.com/Trevo24.

Mergers and acquisitions have long been a priority for our capital allocation and an accelerator of long-term performance. Our ability not only to acquire the right businesses but also to integrate them quickly to drive growth is a strength.

In 2018, we completed a series of acquisitions that will strengthen our core business and add complementary products where we already have a market presence.

Mako Technology has evolved during its more than 13-year history. The year 2018 marked our five-year acquisition anniversary of MAKO Surgical Corp., and through the end of 2018 more than 200,000 Mako procedures have been performed in 26 countries across the globe.¹

Mako Robotic-Arm Assisted Surgery enables surgeons to have a more predictable surgical experience through three unique steps: CT based enhanced planning, dynamic joint balancing and haptic guidance.

In partial knee and total hip applications, Mako has been shown to facilitate more accurate positioning to plan^2,3 and has demonstrated enhanced patient-reported outcomes, like less pain than those undergoing manual surgery during the 90-day post-operative period for Mako Partial Knee, and significantly higher modified Harris Hip scores (92.1+/-10.5 vs. 86.1+/-16.2, p=0.002) for Mako Total Hip compared to manual surgery.^4,5

Mako Total Knee was evaluated in two distinct, prospective, consecutive series, single-surgeon studies comparing patients undergoing conventional jig-based total-knee replacement versus Mako Total Knee surgery (40 patients⁶ and 30 patients⁷ in each cohort).

1.    Stryker’s sales/case data.
2.    Bell SW; Anthony I; Jones B; MacLean A; Rowe P; Blyth M. Improved accuracy of component positioning with robotic-assisted unicompartmental knee arthroplasty: data from a prospective, randomized controlled study. J Bone and Joint Surg. 2016;98: 627–35.
3.    Elson L, Dounchis J, Illgen R, Marchand R, et al. Precision of acetabular cup placement in robotic integrated total hip arthroplasty. Hip Int 2015; 25(6): 531–536.
4.    Blyth MJ, Anthony I, Rowe P, Banger MS, MacLean A, Jones B. Robotic-arm assisted versus conventional unicompartmental knee arthroplasty: Exploratory secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial. Bone and Joint Research. 2017 Nov 16 (11): 631.
5.    Bukowski BR, Chughtai M, Anderson P, et al. Improved functional outcomes with robotic compared with manual total hip arthroplasty. Surg Technol Int. 2016 Oct.
6.    Haddad FS, et al. Robotic-arm assisted total knee arthroplasty is associated with improved early functional recovery and reduced time to hospital discharge compared with conventional jig-based total knee arthroplasty. The Bone & Joint Journal, July 2018.
7.    Haddad FS, et al. Iatrogenic Bone and Soft Tissue Trauma in Robotic-Arm Assisted Total Knee Arthroplasty Compared With Conventional Jig-Based Total Knee Arthroplasty: A Prospective Cohort Study and Validation of a New Classification System. J Arthroplasty. 2018 Aug;33(8):2496–2501. Epub 2018 Mar 27.

Professor Fares S. Haddad is a consultant of Stryker. However, Dr. Haddad and the authors of publications #6 and #7 did not receive financial or in-kind compensation for the research or publications.

That approach began with our founder, Dr. Homer Stryker, an orthopaedic surgeon in Kalamazoo, Michigan, who invented products in the local community hospital where he worked to better serve the needs of his patients.

This spirit of innovation continues to drive us today. We collaborate with hospitals and healthcare providers to make sure we understand their practice environment, treatment protocols and unmet needs.

Our deep understanding of our customers helps us design and manufacture products and services that make a difference for them.

We collaborate across the company and leverage our talented innovators to develop meaningful technology and solutions. And we recognize our best.

Our R&D Fellows Award recognizes significant accomplishments in research and development over time, reflecting the importance of innovation and collaboration to help solve customer problems and develop products and services that advance our mission.

Nominated by their R&D leader and division president, Fellows have developed breakthrough technology and market-leading products that have influenced the direction of our business.