A practice run
A Friday morning practice session with Stryker's Mako robot. Only the knee package is available at this stage, so the procedure practised was a unicompartmental knee replacement, this being the closest available procedure to the shoulder package that is still to come.
What robotic assistance offers
Systems of this kind are not autonomous. The surgeon remains in control throughout; the robot works from a plan built on the patient's CT scan and constrains the instruments to that plan, with the aim of placing the implant components in the intended position more consistently than can be achieved by eye and jig alone. In shoulder replacement, where the orientation of the socket component has a bearing on how the joint loads over time, that accuracy is the point of interest.
Whether this translates into better results for patients over the long term is a question the joint registries will answer as the data accumulates, rather than something that can be claimed in advance.
The shoulder package
The shoulder package is due to launch in August. Once available, the intention is to use the Mako robot for many shoulder replacements, with Stryker's Tornier prosthesis.
With thanks
With thanks to Anthony Silva from Wesley for assisting.
Related information
See our anatomic total shoulder replacement and reverse total shoulder replacement pages, and our post on augmented glenoid components, which addresses the same problem of socket positioning.