Jerry Holiber was a strong recreational athlete in his early 50s when he began to suffer severe hip pain. He couldn't sleep, had to use a cane and downed 20 aspirin a day. He was diagnosed with advanced osteoarthritis (OA), told he needed a hip replacement and counseled to stop playing tennis, his favorite sport.

Undaunted, Jerry explored new and alternative technologies that would return him to his active lifestyle. He discovered an orthopaedic surgeon doing pioneering work with porous-coated hip implants, considered experimental at the time. The porous-coating was designed to achieve "biologic fixation," or ingrowth of bone into the implant surface that would provide greater stability and durability than the more commonly-used bone cement.

Jerry was among the first patients to receive a hip implant with a porous coating on both the femoral stem and the acetabular cup. Now, 22 years after his hip replacement, Jerry still has his original implant and he's still playing tennis four or five times a week.

Jerry hopes that joint replacement patients like him will one day be able to routinely look forward to implants lasting 30 or more years, even under highly demanding conditions.

He believes that the ideal solution for patients with advanced OA is the regeneration of one's own joint tissue using orthobiologic agents and restoration of the joint with minimally invasive surgical procedures. "The evolution of these technologies depends on medical research," he says.

Tissue engineering is the manipulation of proteins, cells and other biomaterials to facilitate the regeneration of musculoskeletal tissue. The emphasis is on the word "regeneration" rather than "repair," because viable, active material, rather than scar tissue, is put to use in healing defects.

It appears to be only a matter of time before surgeons will be able to restore bone loss and cartilage deficits or even grow actual bone from scratch. But to get to that point, researchers will need substantial continued funding.