Carbon Implant May Ease Rheumatoid Arthritis

BOSTON -- A new type of implant may help people deal with the pain of rheumatoid arthritis.

Carbon implants are now being used, after recently being approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Typically, sufferers might face a lifetime of surgeries to replace failing joints with plastic implants that eventually wear out. The carbon implants might solve that problem.

"That's what this is about, relieve a patient's pain and restore function," said Dr. Hillel Skoff of Beth Israel/Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. "If we can do that with an implant where the longevity might be forever, that's a major advance."

Rheumatoid arthritis sufferer Lana Harrington said that she hopes the new implant will eliminate the pain she feels every day.

"I had a lot of difficulty in fine-motor skills, picking up anything, taking off the tapes on Pampers," she said. "I had to cut them off of my child."

Rheumatoid arthritis can strike at any age. It often causes pain in the joints because the body destroys protective cartilage between the bones. Since she was diagnosed with the disease 16 years ago, Harrington has had four joints on her hand replaced with plastic implants, and one of them broke.

"The life expectancy of an implant is 10 years," Skoff said. "It can break and the finger can resume its deformity."

Skoff said that the old implants are still being used, but the new carbon implants may replace them. Harrington will be the first person in New England to get one of the new implants.

Harrington had surgery Monday to remove the broken plastic joint and prepare her hand for the new implant, which she will receive in September. She said that she hopes the new implant, combined with drug therapies, will keep her pain-free and in remission for a long time to come.