Some Hospitals Turning To Robots For Enhanced Knee Replacement Surgery

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - What if knee surgery was more precise, customized from patient to patient, and had a speedy recovery?

Some doctors are now using robots designed specifically for knee replacements.

Scott Kramer loves to garden and walk. But about seven years ago, he noticed something was wrong with his right knee, especially going downhill.

"It just hurt. I didn't know what was wrong. It just felt like an ache. A solid ache. And I just couldn't get rid of it. Eventually, I quit walking. I just couldn't do it," Kramer said.

He tried a brace and shots, but they only worked temporarily. When it got to bone-on-bone along the inner part of the joint, his doctor got right to the point.

"I was expecting Dr. Chu to give me an injection, like cortisone or something. When she walked in she said, 'You need a new knee,' which was not very subtle, but it was shocking," Kramer said.

Scott was only in his 50's, so his surgeon opted for a partial knee replacement with the surgery performed by a robot.

"My first thought was I wasn't going to have a machine cut me open" Kramer said.

As it turns out, the surgeon still does the operation, but the robot carries out very precise, pre-operative plans based on the patient's own MRI scans and GPS navigation.

"We only feed it a 3D model and then add navigation on top of it, but we then use a robot to make sure we are executing that plan to perfection," said Dr. Timothy Sauber.

If the surgeon goes off course, the robot shuts down and stops cutting.

"Its job is to make sure within less than a millimeter, and within a degree, that what we planned for is exactly what we end up with," said Dr. Sauber.

"It just gave me confidence that he wouldn't make a mistake. He's not going to drill in the wrong spot, cut in the wrong spot; you only get one chance at doing this," Kramer said.

Overweight patients and patients younger than 50 are not the best candidates. A rare complication is infection at the site of the navigation pins that are placed in the bones above and below the knee for the procedure.

Though, among a small number of early adopters, the overall complication rate is only 0.4 percent, compared to 4 percent across thousands done the regular way.

"It's one procedure that we think has a lot of benefit, but is sparsely used," Dr. Sauber said.

Sparsely used because it's an expensive piece of equipment for a hospital. In fact, even though Allegheny General Hospital would have been a closer hospital, Kramer had to go to West Penn Hospital for the robot.

"I was doing the robot. I didn't care where it was," he said said.

The surgery was in April and he was up to his old activities shortly thereafter.

"I actually planted my plants three weeks after my surgery," he said.

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