Special Announcement:
“Kryptonite” Super Glue For Sternum Healing
Sarah just sent me this fascinating story about a new super glue, called Kryptonite, used to accelerate sternum healing following open heart surgery. I thought you might appreciate this medical advance featured in Science Daily:
Dr. Paul Fedak - Heart Surgeon & Scientist
Canadian researchers have pioneered a new way to mend a patient’s breastbone after open-heart surgery, using a Superman-strength glue that cuts healing time and reduces pain.The technique uses a state-of-the-art adhesive called Kryptonite that rapidly bonds to bone and accelerates the recovery process, says Dr. Paul Fedak, a cardiac surgeon and scientist at the University of Calgary.
“We can now heal the breastbone in hours instead of weeks after open-heart surgery,” he said Thursday. “Patients can make a full recovery after surgery and get back to full physical activities in days instead of months.”
Fedak said he came up with the idea of using Kryptonite, a biologically compatible adhesive made by a U.S. company, after watching many patients struggle with the aftermath of the surgery, which requires the breastbone to be split vertically to allow access to the heart (also known as a median sternotomy).
“So I fix their heart and they’re usually fine from a heart point of view, but a lot of them have prolonged pain after the surgery in the region of their breastbone,” Dr. Fedak said.
“We haven’t really innovated anything since cardiac surgery became routine 50 years ago, in terms of the chest closure. We’re still closing the chest the same way we always did with stainless steel wires and waiting for the bone to heal over six to eight weeks and hoping that it fuses.”
Augmenting the wires with the adhesive produces a solid bond within 24 hours, reducing time in hospital and allowing patients to resume physical activity sooner - an important component of surgical recovery in general and for heart rehabilitation in particular.
Fedak has used Kryptonite to mend the breastbones of more than 20 patients who had open-heart surgery as part of a pilot study. He is set to head an international trial using the technique, which will involve 500 patients over the next year or two.
One patient in the initial trial has had both methods of knitting his breastbone back together - and he said the glue takes the prize without question.
After Richard Cuming, 62, had cardiac bypass surgery two years ago, the wires holding his sternum together pulled out of the bone, leaving the two halves to rub together whenever he moved. The condition, called sternal disruption, is one of the potential complications arising from open-heart surgery.
“I couldn’t accomplish simple tasks like squeezing toothpaste, turning the steering wheel in my car or pulling open a heavy door without discomfort and pain,” he said.
Coughing or sneezing after heart surgery was “brutal,” Cuming said from his Calgary home, describing his pain level as up to eight on a scale of 10.
But when he had another open-chest operation in July to re-mend his breastbone using Kryptonite, there was a huge difference in his recovery.
“First of all, my chest was solid. I mean it was rock-hard, no movement. I could tell immediately that there was a significant improvement,” Cuming said. “The pain never did get much above a three on a scale of one to 10, and I managed it for the first couple of days in hospital with ibuprofen instead of any narcotic.”
A Common Pain Scale
Fedak has begun teaching the technique to other cardiac surgeons, both in-and-outside Canada. Among them is Dr. George Christakis of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, who calls the use of the adhesive “a terrific idea.”
“It will be good for patients and also great for hospitals, too, because keeping a patient in hospital for a long period of time takes up an enormous amount of money and resources. This would be very, very cost-effective.”
I don’t know about you… But, Kryptonite sounds like it really could have helped me through my recovery.
Keep on tickin!
P.S. To leave a comment, please click here.
About The Author: Adam Pick is a double, heart valve surgery patient and author of The Patient’s Guide To Heart Valve Surgery. This unique book integrates the clinical facts of heart valve surgery with the personal experiences of 78 former valve surgery patients to help patients and caregivers better understand the problems, the opportunities and the realities of heart valve surgery. To learn more about Adam and his heart valve surgery book, click here.
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November 13th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
ADAM:
I have been reading your site fairly regularly as it gives a unique patient perspective on recovery after cardiac surgery. I am trying to understand what the patients experience so that we can better innovate things like the breastbone closure. I’m glad that you seem supportive of our work. Keep up your blog as I am sure many patients and surgeons like me are learning from it.
November 13th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
I am getting ready to have aortic valve surgery soon. I wish the doctors in the United States were using this method.
November 13th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Although I’m old enough I’ve not yet had to go through heart surgery.
I do however build and repair many things including model airplanes and helicopters so am always in search of new adhesives, faster, stronger, lighter, more flexible, etc.
So how do I get my fingers on a bit of Kryptonite to check out different applications? No such information seems to be available.
Thank You,
Enjoy,
Lyle.
November 13th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
I was listening to some of the coverage of this story and learned that there are 1.4M sternotomies (surgeries where the breast bone is opened up) across the globe each year. My understanding from hearing details of the patient impact that the procedure could easily shave days off each patient’s hospital stay. Conservatively, let’s say only one less day per patient and $1,000 per patient-hospital-day. Even at those underestimates, the procedure could shave $1.4B bottom line from the cost of health care around the globe. In reality it could be a lot more, including with fewer prescriptions. Amazing! Good on the Libin Cardiovascular Institute at the University of Calgary (www.LibinInstitute.org) - need more doctors, nurses and scientists working together to create real-world solutions. Good stuff Drs Fedak and King!!!
November 14th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Sounds great - my husband is expecting to have bypass surgery at St Pauls’ Hospital in Vancouver BC in the near future. Do you know if Kryptonite is being used there? If not, when might we expect it to be introduced?
Thanks for any information you can provide.
November 14th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
I heard about Kryptonite from a friend re: CBC radio, the other day. I looked it up online and it sounded great - amazing really. I talked to my surgeon about using it for my upcoming mitral valve replacement surgery (it was postponed from Nov 5th to the 23rd due to my catching a bad cold prior to the original surgery date). The response I received from my surgeon was that it didn’t have any long-term studies done as yet so wiring the sternum is still the standard practice. Does Dr Fedak have any long-term studies re: what happens in there is a need to go back into the heart - how do you cut through the sternum after using this glue? Is it toxic to the body? Do patients with other health conditions, i.e. auto-immune diseases have any reactions to it? Does it create other health problems? It seems like such a great product and would be so amazing for healing - hope it is as great as it appears today in the long term.
Thanks,
Sheila
November 14th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Hi Sheila,
Great questions. It looks like Dr. Fedak stops by this website every so often.
Hopefully, you’ll get some answers directly from the source!
All the best with your upcoming mitral valve replacement.
My thoughts and prayers are with you.
Keep on tickin!
Adam
November 16th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Sheila wrote:
> The response I received from my surgeon was that it didn’t
> have any long-term studies done as yet so wiring the sternum
> is still the standard practice. Does Dr Fedak have any long-term
> studies re: what happens in there is a need to go back into the
> heart - how do you cut through the sternum after using this
> glue? Is it toxic to the body?
Hi Sheila:
Regarding studies, that is precisely what Dr. Fedak is doing. Dr. Fedak is a PhD’s Cardiac Surgeon at the ‘cutting edge’ (no pun intended). Items such as this do not become standard practice till thought and science leaders like he do their work - an initial pilot study followed by full-fledged international clinical trial.
Regarding getting in there again, yes this is no problem with Kyptonite - and this would have been an area thoroughly investigated before gaining approval for the pilot study. It is something that can be tested quite easily outside of patients and also in animal models.
Regarding if it is toxic, that is again something that would have been thoroughly investigated prior to launch of the pilot study. Kryptonite is not toxic to the body. In fact it has been used on some other bones in the past with great success - so that is significant comfort. The use in the sternum is, of course, quite different from fixing any other bones in the body (most of which can be immobilized much more effectively).
December 5th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Like Sheila above, I too heard about this on CBC radio. Good idea!
Is there something special about the sternum that only allows this adhesive to be used there, or does this glue work for all bones?
The reason I ask is because my friend’s mother, who is in her seventies, recently fell and broke her hip. It’s a common thing with older people and it sometimes takes months for them to regain their mobility. If this glue works on all bones, then combined with screws and steel pins, it could have these people back on their feet within weeks. That would free up a lot of hospital beds.
If all bone fractures could be treated in this way then this is a major medical discovery. Recovery times could be considerably shortened and suffering could be minimized if we could just start glueing broken bones.
I suppose if surgery is required to expose the bone, it might be best to use it only on complicated fractures where surgery is required anyway.
I don’t know, it’s just a thought. You’re the doctors.
January 29th, 2010 at 9:26 am
I have had 3 open chest surgeries the last being Monday January 25th. My first two were done the old fashioned wire method and the last Kryptonite was used. All I have to say is that this stuff is a miracle I woke up from surgery thinking that they hadn’t even done it- recovery was extremely fast and I was home only 3 days later. I am thrilled with the results!