Carty named Director of Strategy and Innovation of the Gillian Reny Stepping Strong Center for Trauma Innovation

Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr. Matthew Carty has been named Director of Strategy and Innovation for the Gillian Reny Stepping Strong Center for Trauma Innovation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

“I feel incredibly honored to be part of the Stepping Strong community,” says Dr. Carty. “In the past four years, grants from the Stepping Strong Innovator Awards program have made it possible for us to make amazing advances in treatments for trauma patients, notably in the way we perform amputations. I look forward to helping the center build on this foundation and explore new approaches to clinical innovations that we could have never imagined before.”

Dr. Carty is also Director of the Lower Limb Extremity Transplant Program at BWH and an assistant professor at HMS. He is focused on reinventing how lower extremity amputations are performed in order to provide amputees with greater control of prosthetics and restore their limb responsiveness. In collaboration with Hugh Herr, PhD, from the Center for Extreme Bionics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and with funding from Stepping Strong, Dr. Carty’s team has completed multiple studies in animal models and human simulations. In 2016, Dr. Carty and colleagues filed for a patent for a series of designs developed to enable the construction of muscle pairings in limb amputations. These designs formed the basis for ongoing work to reinvent the surgical approach used for lower limb amputation and are informing efforts to develop the next generation of lower extremity prostheses at MIT. As of July 2018, Dr. Carty and his team have completed modified amputation procedures in nine patients at the below knee level and one patient at the above knee level. The pioneering surgery makes it possible for an amputee to use a bionic prosthetic that acts like a natural limb.

The Gillian Reny Stepping Strong Center for Trauma Innovation seeks to mobilize interdisciplinary innovation and collaboration to fuel research and care for the benefit of civilians and military heroes worldwide who have suffered devastating traumatic injuries and events. It aims to transform the care of trauma patients through science, innovation and new technology. For more information on Stepping Strong, visit steppingstrong.bwh.harvard.edu.