Suzanne Ryan has a bum knee. If she doesn’t spend most of the day sitting down, she ends up coping with a lot of pain.

Her doctors say there are two options for the semi-retired elementary school teacher: Knee replacement surgery, using state-of-the-art plastic implants, or periodic injections to reduce inflammation and pain and improve joint flexibility.

When MassDevice first speaks with Ryan, in March, she’s unsure which offers the best chance of regaining mobility.

“I’m not sure which treatment I’ll choose,” Ryan says. “The device or the drugs.”

President Barack Obama wants to help her decide.

It seems the hospital bed business ain’t what she used to be, at least for Stryker Corp.

Slumping sales for its medical/surgical equipment division during the quarter ended March 31 meant the Kalamazoo-based medical products giant needed its orthopedic division to provide some padding.

But the princess felt the pea as the division, which includes Hopkinton’s Stryker Biotech, failed to deliver enough of a cushion. Stryker lowered its 2009 guidance, citing weak med/surg sales.

The Massachusetts Medical Devices Journal is the online journal of the medical devices industry in the Commonwealth and New England, providing day-to-day coverage of the devices that save lives, the people behind them, and the burgeoning trends and developments within the industry.