Ken Cutbush spoke at the Royal North Shore Shoulder Symposium in Sydney about the Enfix prosthesis and its use in rotator cuff repair procedures.
The Enfix prosthesis is an implant made from Demineralised Bone Fibre (DBF). There is now a lot of scientific evidence from multiple animal model studies that DBF implants placed in the footprint of a rotator cuff repair between the tendon and bone interface can induce healing of the repair with enthesis formation. Rotator cuff repairs typically heal with scar tissue between the repaired tendon and the bone. Healthy tendons attach to bone through an enthesis. An enthesis has a typical structure that progresses from tendon to bone as follows: tendon/ uncalcified fibrocartilage/ tide mark/ calcified fibrocartilage/ bone.
Tendon attached to bone with enthesis is stronger than tendon attached to bone with scar tissue.
What is exciting about the Enfix prosthesis is that if using it with Rotator cuff repairs can produce a repair with an enthesis rather scar tissue we should expect to see a repair that is less prone to retest and one that is stronger and more robust in the long term.