Components of state-of-the-art orthopedic surgical equipment have been added to the Ozarks Healthcare surgical department toolbox in order to improve patient outcomes and recovery time in hip and knee replacement surgeries.
The system was introduced to the public Thursday during a drop-in event at the hospital, attended by hospital employees, community members and anyone interested in the technology and how it will be implemented.
It is a Stryker Mako SmartRobotics system, and it operates connected to an individual patient's computed tomography scan (CT scan), allowing surgeries and joint replacements to be tailored to the patient's individual measurements and guiding orthopedic surgeons in making adjustments for best outcomes.
How it works: A CT image is generated in 3-D, which then allows the surgeon to look at the surgery area from all angles and measurements, in order to know more precisely how the surgery should proceed.
In a hip joint replacement surgery, for example, the technology shows where the hip joint is placed in the patient's body before surgery and how it lies in relation to the hip joint socket. For a surgeon planning an operation, attendees to the drop-in learned, this feature is crucial in determining where and how much tissue will need to be removed to install replacement parts. It allows a surgeon to avoid removing too much healthy tissue, and the joints throughout the leg to better align, so the patient's results are as close to natural movement as possible, presenters added.
The system also uses robotic surgical instruments and CT scan measurements are integrated using haptic technology, meaning the surgical instruments relay a touch-sensitive signal to the surgeon during the operation providing real-time feedback.
The goal of using the technology is to cause less bone and soft tissue damage, reduce pain during recovery from surgery, along with the need for opioid painkillers, and shorten hospital stays and physical therapy sessions.
Mako SmartRobotics systems are being used, as of 2021, in about 67 teaching institutions, with about 1,400 systems installed in every state and 36 countries, and have performed 615,000 procedures and been the subject of over 280 published peer-reviewed studies.
According to projections estimated by Mako SmartRobotics, the demand for total knee replacement procedures will increase by 673% by 2030 and primary total hip replacements will increase by 174% by 2030, due to an increasing population older than age 65, rising obesity rates and increased partial knee joint replacement demands among younger patients.
