Superelastic Staples Facilitate Extremities Fusion Surgery

A new flexible orthopedic implant system is designed for fusing the small joints located in the foot, ankle, hand, and wrist.

The FuseFORCE SuperElastic Fixation System consists of a complete, sterile kit containing super-elastic Nitinol staples and all of the instruments required for the implantation procedure. A specially designed inserter allows the implant to be loaded without handling by the surgeon. But unlike other Nitinol implants, the FuseFORCE implant requires no heat to activate its compressive properties; its super-elastic properties allow the implant legs to act as springs, rather than relying on heat for activation. The built-in “spring effect” thus creates the necessary compression and fixation.


The compression-ready fixation implant is end-loaded onto the sterile, disposable inserter, and provides compression on release. The system is available in various sizes for specific surgical needs, and is pre-sterilized to reduce hospital costs. The FuseFORCE SuperElastic Fixation System is a product of Solana Surgical (Memphis, TN, USA), and has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“Hospitals and surgery centers are beginning to request pre-sterilized implants and instruments as a way to reduce their own sterile processing and liability costs,” said Alan Taylor, president and CEO of Solana Surgical. “Solana is a leader in the extremity market for this innovation.”

Nitinol is a metal alloy of nickel and titanium in roughly equal atomic percentages that exhibits two closely related and unique properties. The first is shape memory, which refers to its ability to undergo deformation at one temperature and recover its original, undeformed shape upon heating above its transformation temperature. The second is superelasticity (also called pseudoelasticity), which occurs at a narrow temperature range just above its transformation temperature; in this case, no heating is necessary to cause the un-deformed shape to recover, and the material exhibits enormous elasticity, some 10–30 times that of ordinary metal.

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