Dr. Alberto Marqués has been recognized, once again, among the scientific community thanks to his Almara patent. The newspaper La Razón in the supplement “A tu Salud” has included the interview about his patent within the yearbook of the most relevant health news of the past 2018. Almara is a device that performs bone grafts shortening surgery time. Its great advantage is that a procedure that used to take 15 minutes is performed in just 10 seconds. In addition, it makes it possible to easily reach the disc space, which must be accessed to join the vertebrae.
How did Almara come about?
Observing the difficulty of the bone grafting technique, a complicated process that involved considerable surgical time, the need to create a device that would help perform this technique was analyzed. For this purpose, different practical elements that the device should have in order to fulfill its main objective were considered. Facilitating access to remote spaces, such as, for example, the disc space to simplify bone grafting, is one of the main objectives of this device. Hence, the design serves precisely for this, looking for a way to perform this laborious process in a simpler technique and in less time. Until now, no device had been invented that could meet these objectives.
In which patients can it be used?
Bone grafting is used in Orthopedic Reconstructive Surgery in patients suffering from fractures, bone loss or to repair an injured bone that has not healed. It is also necessary in cases in which patients require intersomatic fusion, with the objective of stabilizing and strengthening the spine to alleviate low back pain. In addition, thanks to this new device, the time required for this process has been simplified, making surgery faster and more comfortable, with greater efficiency and less aggression for the patient. The fact of being able to access the disc space quickly and easily is a great advantage for the patient, since the neurological structures are not at risk.
What is the Almara procedure?
The nurse places the bone graft inside the device and hammers the upper plunger, automatically inserting the graft into the desired area. It is a minimally invasive, percutaneous surgical procedure and offers the possibility of performing interventions in 10 seconds. While the device is being introduced by the medical team, the surgeon can use this time for other phases. In this way, in addition to shortening the bone grafting time, the time for the entire surgery is also reduced.
In the words of Dr. Marquis…
The handling is so simple that it is enough to see it once to know how to use it. So far, it has been used in 10 patients without any complication, achieving a more comfortable and faster spinal fusion procedure. It has no contraindications other than that it does not allow you to reach the area you wish to fuse.