By John Kennedy
Dublin med tech firm X-Bolt Orthopedics is to spend €1m on a clinical trial of its hip fracture medical device at Oxford University.
The 1,000-patient trial follows a successful clinical trial of 100 patients that showed a zero re-operation rate for the X-Bolt. 
X-Bolt is designed to significantly improve the efficiency of current surgical treatment and reduce the requirement for very costly and often devastating repeat surgery.
The 1,000-patient, multicentre, randomised, control trial ‘WHITE Four’ (World Hip Trauma Evaluation Four), to be conducted by Oxford University, follows the recent successful ‘WHITE One’ clinical trial of 100 patients from the University of Warwick, which showed a zero percent re-operation rate with the X-Bolt device, where a 5-10pc re-operation rate would normally have been expected in these unstable intertrochanteric (the ridge where the hip meets the femur) hip fractures.