Zimmer Launches a New Era in Knee Replacement with Persona™ The Personalized Knee System

CHICAGO, March 20, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Zimmer Holdings, Inc. (NYSE and SIX: ZMH), a global leader in musculoskeletal health, today introduced Persona The Personalized Knee System, at the 2013 American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting. The Persona System ushers in a new era in total knee replacement, combining personalized implants with intelligent instrumentation to provide surgeons with a new level of intraoperative precision to customize the best fit for their patients. 

More than 600,000 total knee replacements are performed each year in the United States. While total knee replacement is among the most clinically successful procedures in modern medicine, patient expectations are increasing, leaving some patients less than fully satisfied. Despite the success of total knee replacement, current knee systems lack the fidelity to precisely match the anatomy and biomechanics of the natural knee for a global patient population.               

As the market leader and a pioneer in total knee replacement, Zimmer committed to engineer the highest fidelity knee system ever. Building upon the clinical legacy of Zimmer's NexGen® and Natural-Knee® systems, two of the world's most clinically-proven and widely used knee systems, Zimmer employed cutting-edge scientific tools to design Persona The Personalized Knee System, which aims to deliver unprecedented fit, natural feel, and normal function.   

"The Persona System is the most comprehensive, anatomically accurate and highest fidelity knee replacement system ever designed," said Jeff McCaulley, President, Zimmer Global Reconstructive. "Zimmer scientists and engineers and their designing surgeon partners pushed the boundaries of implant design, drawing upon advanced morphology, physiology, kinesiology and material sciences to develop a truly revolutionary system that allows surgeons to provide each patient with a personalized fit."

A number of breakthrough technologies went into the design of Persona The Personalized Knee System:

- Zimmer's Bone Resection Atlas (ZiBRA) is an advanced bone atlas with virtual resection and component placement capabilities. This tool allowed the Persona System's surgeon designers and engineers to study the morphology of hundreds of bones, representing a diverse global population, to precisely define anatomically accurate implant shapes and sizes.

- Zimmer's Virtual Biomechanical Knee (VBK) is a kinematic computational analysis program that allows rapid testing of hundreds of different design options to virtually assess their impact on soft tissues, motion and overall performance to optimize designs that more closely replicate natural feel and normal function.

- Zimmer's Robotic Simulator uses a six-axis, high-precision robot to replicate the kinematic patterns and biomechanical forces for a range of patient daily activities, validating the fidelity, precision and robustness of the implant designs.

Building upon this revolutionary design, the Persona System incorporates Zimmer's most advanced material technologies. Vivacit-E® advanced bearing surface material, incorporating Vitamin E, offers improved strength, ultra-low wear and exceptional oxidative stability for long-term performance. Trabecular Metal^TM Technology porous metal is available on every compartment of the new knee system, facilitating biologic fixation of the knee replacement.

Complementing the most personalized and precise knee implant system, Zimmer is introducing a range of intelligent instrumentation to perform more precise and efficient procedures.

"The instrumentation for the Persona System was specifically designed to provide surgeons with a new level of precision in order to take full advantage of the fidelity of the Persona implants," said Steve White, General Manager and Vice President, Knees at Zimmer. "Surgeons told us that to create a more natural feeling, normal functioning knee for patients, we needed to develop implants and instruments that enable a more precise intraoperative fit and feel."

Zimmer's intelligent instrument technologies for Persona The Personalized Knee System include: Zimmer® Patient Specific Instruments, which utilize pre-operative MRI images of a patient's knee to create customized surgical instruments in order to improve implant placement; iASSIST^TM Knee, The Personalized Guidance System^TM, a revolutionary surgical guidance technology that provides simple, intuitive and accurate intraoperative feedback and alignment verification at the surgical site without the need for bulky capital equipment; and the eLibra® Dynamic Knee Balancing System, which enables precise rotation of the femoral components to facilitate efficient and reliable soft tissue balancing.             

Persona The Personalized Knee System represents a significant advance in personalization and precision for surgeons and their patients. The system also represents a breakthrough for healthcare systems, providing a premium implant, while reducing total costs and increasing efficiencies in and around the procedure. Leveraging the latest advances in surgery scheduling, pre-operative planning, digital templating, and contemporary logistics, the Persona System's innovative modular trays allow surgeons to select only the instruments and sizes needed to successfully complete the surgery, minimizing the total number of trays for each case. When used in conjunction with intelligent instruments, Persona Knee procedures can be executed with only two to three trays. 

"We designed the Persona System to meet the demands of today's patients and provide unmatched surgical precision for surgeons, all in the context of concerns about the total cost of care. The Persona System was designed to help hospitals deliver high quality, consistent outcomes while reducing total costs," said Jeff McCaulley. "Zimmer has long been the global leader in knee replacement technology, but with the Persona System and our new intelligent instrument offerings, we are revolutionizing the standard of care for patients for the next decade and beyond."

For more information about Persona The Personalized Knee System, visit Zimmer at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons annual meeting, or go to http://persona.zimmer.com.

About the Company
Founded in 1927 and headquartered in Warsaw, Indiana, Zimmer designs, develops, manufactures and markets orthopaedic reconstructive, spinal and trauma devices, dental implants, and related surgical products. Zimmer has operations in more than 25 countries around the world and sells products in more than 100 countries. Zimmer's 2012 sales were approximately $4.5 billion. The Company is supported by the efforts of more than 8,500 employees worldwide.

Zimmer Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about the orthopaedics industry, management's beliefs and assumptions made by management.  Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terms such as "may," "will," "expects," "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "estimates," "projects," "assumes," "guides," "targets," "forecasts," and "seeks" or the negative of such terms or other variations on such terms or comparable terminology. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, see our periodic reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. We disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be set forth in our periodic reports.  Readers of this document are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, since, while we believe the assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, there can be no assurance that these forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate. This cautionary statement is applicable to all forward-looking statements contained in this document.

SOURCE Zimmer Holdings, Inc.