Robotic tech aids joint replacements greatly

Hyderabad: Apollo Hospitals hosted a one-day '5th Arthroplasty Arthroscopy Summit,' under the aegis of Telangana Orthopaedic Surgeon's Association (TOSA) and Twin Cities Orthopaedic Society (TCOS), here on Sunday.

Dr Mithin Aachi said that these techniques will mark a paradigm shift in knee & hip replacement surgeries in the near future. They bring about precision, lessen risk of failure as they ensure dynamic gap balancing, which is error-prone when done manually, enhance longevity of prosthesis, reduce blood loss, damage to blood vessels, soft tissue, cartilage, less complications etc., and thereby enable speedy recovery of the patient and they getting back to routine. Despite the greatest experience a surgeon has performing surgeries, there is always an element of human error, robot greatly reduces that error.

Dr Somashekar Reddy said robot arm-assisted navigated knee replacement and Artificial Intelligence would dominate in future for patient care. There would be an exponential increase in their usage in the years to come, he felt.

Usually for a robot-assisted surgery, patient undergoes CT scan of the knee to correctly update the surgeon about the deformity and the thickness of bone cuts required and the implant sizes to be placed. This enhanced planning gives the surgeon an idea of the type of bone cuts required and the size of implants which will correctly match that patient on an individual level.

Once this is fed into the software, a camera helps in understanding the position of knee by markers placed in its bone. Once the 3D position of the knee is determined by the robot, it helps in achieving the bone cuts to perfection by aligning the Robot Arm in the correct plane as the surgeon starts his bone cuts. No deviation from the correct plane is seen in this, even though the knee might shift in position during surgery for which the Robot camera adjusts the alignment again in functionally accurate position.