Pyrocarbon versus Silicone Proximal Interphalangeal Joint Arthroplasty
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Arthritis at the proximal interphalangeal joint can be a disabling chronic condition. Silicone arthroplasty is a common surgical treatment option to provide pain relief and maintain joint mobility. Pyrocarbon implants are gaining popularity as an alternative to silicone prostheses. The purpose of this systematic review is to compare the outcomes of silicone and pyrocarbon arthroplasties for patients with proximal interphalangeal joint arthritis. METHODS: A computerized search was conducted to identify studies evaluating outcomes of silicone and pyrocarbon arthroplasties. The data extracted were patient demographics, pain relief, range of motion, grip and pinch strength, costs, quality of life, and complications. RESULTS: Thirty-five relevant citations were identified. Available data showed that both arthroplasties offered satisfactory pain relief. The implants also provided similar postoperative weighted mean arcs of motion, with a value of 37.4 ± 13.6 degrees for silicone and 44.8 ± 16.8 degrees for pyrocarbon. There were comparable results in grip and pinch strengths as well. No studies were identified that performed an economic analysis of arthroplasty. Six studies assessed quality-of-life outcomes after pyrocarbon surgery, and results were mixed. The rates of revision and salvage procedures performed secondary to complications were higher after pyrocarbon arthroplasty. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the available low level of evidence, pyrocarbon arthroplasty does not demonstrate clear superiority over silicone implants. In fact, there is concern about the complication rates of these implants. Future studies should focus on more rigorous study designs using validated quality-of-life scales and economic evaluations before widespread adoption of this new implant. CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Therapeutic, IV.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".