High-Tech Prostheses

Dartmouth Biomedical Engineering Center Director John Collier '72, Th '77, is the inventor of an improved technology for hip and knee replacements. The technique involves a sandpaper-like finish on metal prostheses that allows bone tissue to grow into the implants, causing the strongest bonds yet created in artificial joints. Since the FDA approved the use of porous metal coatings on orthopedic prostheses in the early 1980s, tens of thousands of porous-coated hip and knee prostheses have been functioning well in patients some for as long as 15 years.

Collier's hips are still hopping.