A Central Ohio orthopedic surgeon is among the first in the country performing a new-to-the-United-States procedure for thumb arthritis, using an implant that surgeons compare to a mini hip replacement scaled down for the hand. Julia Brown, who lives with thumb carpometacarpal arthritis, spent two and a half years in significant pain in both thumbs before undergoing the surgery on her left thumb in July 2026.
Brown described the pain in her left hand at the time as extremely painful, according to NBC4 WCMH-TV. Dr. Stephen Berling, an orthopedic hand surgeon with OhioHealth, sees thumb carpometacarpal arthritis frequently in his patients and became the first physician in Ohio to perform the procedure when he operated on Brown. The condition Brown lives with, thumb arthritis, affects millions of people, and the joint it targets — the base of the thumb — is one of the most heavily used in the entire hand.
How the New Implant Works
The device Berling used features a cup-like implant paired with a stem that extends into the metacarpal bone, providing immediate stability and motion, the station's report notes. Berling has described the surgery as essentially a mini hip replacement for the thumb. The implant itself is the TOUCH® CMC 1 Prosthesis, made by Swiss medical technology company KeriMedical, which received U.S. Food and Drug Administration Premarket Approval in July 2025.
Per the FDA, the device is approved specifically for first carpometacarpal joint total joint replacement in adult patients with symptomatic Eaton-Littler Stage II or Stage III osteoarthritis, meaning candidacy depends on how far the disease has progressed. The prosthesis relies on a cementless, dual-mobility ball-and-socket design with press-fit titanium components, according to Rothman Orthopaedics, allowing motion between the plastic ball, the cup, and the metal head to reduce the risk of dislocation. While the device only recently reached the U.S. market, it has been in clinical use across European hospitals since 2018, with more than 150,000 devices implanted in European patients, per UCHealth Today.
A Sharp Break From Decades-Old Surgery
For decades, the standard treatment for severe basal thumb arthritis was trapeziectomy or Ligament Reconstruction and Tendon Interposition, procedures that required removing the trapezium wrist bone entirely and harvesting a forearm tendon graft, according to MedStar Health. That traditional approach carries a recovery time of six to nine months, per NBC4's reporting, while the new implant procedure shortens recovery to roughly six to nine weeks. Thumb carpometacarpal arthritis is far from rare — the condition affects up to 15% of adults over age 30 and approximately 33% of postmenopausal women, according to a review article hosted on PubMed Central, making it one of the most common and disabling joint conditions in the hand.
The surgery itself takes about 45 minutes and requires no overnight hospital stay, cutting recovery time dramatically compared with older methods. Berling said the procedure gets people back to life faster and preserves strength quicker. Patients who have already received the implant on one hand have gone on to schedule the procedure for their other hand, and Brown is among them — she plans to undergo surgery on her other thumb later this fall.
From Medical Assistant to Patient
Brown, who works as an author and caretaker, was a medical assistant and used her hands and thumbs extensively on the job, which made the constant pain especially disruptive. Now, using her left hand daily, she says she does not feel like she ever had surgery at all. Her experience mirrors a broader pattern seen in early clinical data: a 2026 European health economics study protocol found patients receiving the TOUCH implant returned to work in an average of 20 days, compared to 54 days for patients undergoing traditional bone-resection surgery, according to the ISRCTN Registry.
The device has reached the U.S. market following its 2025 approval. Berling earned his medical degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 2015, completed his residency at Mount Carmel Health System in 2020, and finished fellowship training in hand surgery at the University of Arizona, according to OhioHealth. Ohio's rollout follows a similar procedure performed in Maryland, where WBAL-TV reported on a Baltimore patient's recovery earlier this month.
