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Doctor
Alain Dambreville was born in Roubaix on November 19, 1942.
Fellow
ship doctor, and then assistant senior registrar at Lille
University Hospital in the department of Pr. Pierre Decoulx,
he settled in Quimper in 1976.
The
large number of dysplasia hip pathologies in that region
quickly caused him to turn towards prosthetic hip surgery,
which is his exclusive research area. He
designed the Esop® in 1986, and fitted the
first one in July 1987.
The international success of the implant, which has not
stopped growing ever since, is a know nfact
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He
admits that it is a smart concept, but that it owes a great
deal of its success to luck. Many advantages, initially
unexpected, were found out later on.
Thus, even if the polyethylene thickness was expected from
the start to be a crucial longevity factor, the equally
essential insert fastening system in the cup designed by
engineers proved to be highly efficient.
In the same way, Dr. Dambreville had
originally designed an elastic cup in order to allow for
bone elasticity. Actually, it was Jean Louis Doré who
found out in 1989 about the main advantage of such
elasticity : after impacting an Esop® cup
bigger in size than the reaming, installing the insert
causes the elastic cup to expand, providing the strong
"press fit" effect.
Luck was also behind later choices
(Hydroxyapatite in 1989, aluminia -Alumina - PE sandwich in
1997...).
Therefore Esop®' success is mainly due to
FHI's engineers and friend surgeons, namely the
FUTURA
group from GECO.
Owing to FUTURA, Esop® was combined with
André Ray's ESOP
femoral prosthesis in 1992. A happy combination, as
Esop® has never been disappointed by ESOP
stem, and vice versa...
Alain
Dambreville now lives in Nice, where between two
conventions, he devotes himself to his other passion,
chronic orthopaedic pain curing. He has published several
books on that subject.
To find out more : Click
here  (French
version only)
To contact Dr
Dambreville
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