Team Osseo Stellies

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Team Osseo Stellies 📍 South Africa | Led by .ortho
🦿Osseo-integration
💡The future of prosthetics is here
🌍Treating patients globally

Movement, pressure, vibration. Patients with bone-anchored prostheses report feeling all three through the implant, not ...
20/10/2026

Movement, pressure, vibration. Patients with bone-anchored prostheses report feeling all three through the implant, not just around it.

Here's the science behind osseoperception and why it matters for balance and confidence on your feet.

Two different journeys, one shared understanding of what it actually takes to get here.There's something about sitting w...
13/10/2026

Two different journeys, one shared understanding of what it actually takes to get here.

There's something about sitting with someone who's walked the same road - the good days and the hard ones. Moments like this are as much a part of recovery as the surgery itself and these are the moments our patients remember forever.

09/10/2026

Months of work, one step at a time - and this is where it leads.

Every person in this video put in the hard work long before the camera started rolling. This is what dedication looks like once it's paid off.

Marcus spent four years wheelchair-bound, unable to tolerate a socket prosthetic on either side. On 20 August 2026, he u...
06/10/2026

Marcus spent four years wheelchair-bound, unable to tolerate a socket prosthetic on either side. On 20 August 2026, he underwent bilateral osseointegration in a single procedure.

His two stumps weren't equal in length, which meant the surgical and loading plan had to account for that difference before anything else could happen.

The procedure was carried out by Dr Franz Birkholtz, supported by the wider Osseo Stellies team, including wound care, physiotherapy, psychology and prosthetics, working together on a case that needed more than one kind of expertise.

Solving for two implants of different lengths took some genuinely inventive problem-solving. There's more to Marcus's story still to come.

Marcus's story starts with a motor vehicle accident on 3 February 2019, which led to the loss of his right leg below the...
01/10/2026

Marcus's story starts with a motor vehicle accident on 3 February 2019, which led to the loss of his right leg below the knee, and later his left leg below the knee. He came to Dr Franz Birkholtz with a left stump that wouldn't heal, complicated by infection and osteomyelitis, as well as difficulty wearing a socket on his right side.

Marcus wanted osseointegration from his very first consultation, on 2 April 2025. Getting there meant an above-knee amputation performed by Dr Franz Birkholtz, followed by two further revisions to manage pain, wound healing and haematoma formation along the way.

Marcus had already been wheelchair- bound since September 2024, due to ongoing problems with socket fit, wear and discomfort, and he remained so throughout this entire process.
Funding was finally approved on 24 July 2026, opening the door to the surgery he'd wanted from the start.

Through all of it, Marcus was completely wheelchair-bound, and had been for four years, due to ongoing problems with socket fit, wear and discomfort.

This October, we're following Marcus from his very first consult through to recovery.

30/09/2026

Can osseointegration patients still experience phantom limb pain?

Yes, patients with an osseointegration implant can still experience phantom limb pain. It doesn't just disappear because the prosthetic attachment changes.

What the team does observe, though, is that these patients tend to report less of it compared to patients using a socket-based prosthesis. Dr Franz's view is that this may come down to the direct interface an osseointegration implant creates with the bone, rather than the pressure a socket places on the surrounding nerves.

25/09/2026

A lot of amputees assume high impact sport is off the table for good.

With socket prosthetics, that's often true. The friction, the shifting, the fitting issues, they add up fast during anything athletic.

Osseointegration works differently. The prosthetic anchors straight into the bone, so movement transfers directly instead of getting lost in a socket. What you're watching is that difference in real time.

23/09/2026

"Does the implant hurt when I sleep?" It's one of the questions the Osseo Stellies team hear most often, and it's a fair one to ask.

Dr B unpacks this question in the video - it's a good reminder that a lot of what holds people back from asking about osseointegration isn't the procedure itself, it's the unknowns around it.

If you've got a question about osseointegration you've been sitting on, send it through, chances are you're not the only one wondering.

Fitting days are when months of work come together, quite literally.This is when the prosthetic gets fitted, adjusted, a...
22/09/2026

Fitting days are when months of work come together, quite literally.

This is when the prosthetic gets fitted, adjusted, and attached to the implant for the first time. It's the day the surgery, the loading protocol, and the physio have all been building toward. It's not the end of the process and there's still rehab ahead, but it's the point where things start to feel real.

Every fitting day looks a little different. Some patients walk almost straight away, others take it slower, and both are completely normal. The team is always there to support this process.

Rehab after osseointegration doesn't look like one thing; it is more than that. Harnesses, parallel bars, weight scales,...
18/09/2026

Rehab after osseointegration doesn't look like one thing; it is more than that. Harnesses, parallel bars, weight scales, small victories, moments of frustration, and moments where someone laughs mid-session because it finally clicked.

This is the work, stage by stage:
- Learning to bear weight again
- Building the strength to hold a position
- Relearning balance from the ground up, sometimes literally on your knees before you're back on your feet.

None of it runs on a fixed timeline. Some days you push further, other days you just hold steady. Lenka and the rehab team are there for both.

What ties it all together is consistency, not one breakthrough moment, but dozens of ordinary ones adding up to something real. If you have any questions about rehab, reach out to the team.

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F3 Mediclinic Winelands Orthopaedic Hospital
Stellenbosch
7600

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