Dr. Robot
Robotic Surgery Making Leaps and Bounds
For the first time, doctors are using computerized robotic technology to rebuild knee joints with a precision never seen before, making knee surgery less invasive and less painful. It's this cutting-edge and ground-breaking technology Valley senior, Olympian Bill Lammers was hoping for, and grateful to have found.
With a stack of medals in shot-put and discus, Lammers was on a winning streak, capturing titles across the country, relying on his joints and his power-house body to keep up. But while he had the heart to win, Lammers says his knees were giving out. “You put a lot of pressure on your knees when you are pushing off,” he says. “Legs are a big thing in shot and disc.”
About six years ago, Lammers had his right knee completely replaced due to pain and stiffness from arthritis. Then, his left knee began giving him serious problems. “I really blew it up at the [Senior] World Games in 2010,” Lammers says. After a number of surgeries where doctors removed up to eight pieces of broken bone, he and doctors decided there was only one thing left to do—replace his other knee.
It was something Lammers was not looking forward to. He knew undergoing another total knee replacement would mean months of down time with a painful and difficult rehab schedule, leaving no time to train or compete. “You get a lot of nerve damage and ligament damage [with surgery],” says Lammers. “I’m not an expert, but if you can’t feel your knee for six or seven months, you know something is going on in there.”
Knowing he could not compete in his condition, Lammers began looking for alternatives when he happened upon an advertisement for a new knee procedure called Makoplasty. He contacted the doctor immediately.
Makoplasty involves computerized robotics to assist doctors in surgery. This new procedure arrived at St. Luke's Hospital last year, and Orthopedic Surgeon Dr. Jimmy Chow was the first physician in Phoenix to use it. “It's a new way to do partial knee replacements,” says Chow. “We basically resurface parts of the knee only as they are diseased,” Chow explains.
Chow says the procedure has been especially effective with patients experiencing wear and tear issues, such as arthritis. This was good news for Lammers, who visited Dr. Chow, and was hopeful the robotic technique would work for him. After undergoing a battery of tests, to his surprise and delight, Lammers learned he would be a good candidate for this new procedure.
According to Dr. Chow, one of the advantages of using robot technology, is that it allows doctors to precisely work on individual portions of damaged bone, leaving the rest intact. “We keep the good parts of the knee that are not diseased,” says Chow. “We also keep the ACL and PCL ligaments on the inside of the leg, basically keeping most of the knee’s normal mechanics.”
For a typical knee replacement, recovery can be long and arduous for many patients. Dr. Chow says it's challenging for patients to learn how to use an artificial joint; they are shaped differently, therefore muscles and tendons have to work differently. Usually, this healing process takes time as the body struggles to adapt. But, with Makoplasty, doctors are hoping to eliminate this difficult healing process making the pain and recovery time of knee surgery, a thing of the past.
Here's how the robotic technique works: After a series of cat scans, Dr. Chow programs which parts of the joint need to be resurfaced. A GPS system is attached to the knee to help guide the doctor, to show its exact positioning. Then, an instrument that looks much like a Dremel tool is attached to the robotic arm which does the cutting, acting as a virtual cutting guide.
“It gives us the ability to trace out what we are doing without going too deep, without going too shallow and without going outside of the boundaries, basically painting the bone away with the robot,” says Chow, giving surgeons a type of precision they've never seen before in orthopedics.
For the first time, doctors are able to cut curves inside a knee with ease. “We've never been able to do that before,” says Chow. “We have always had straight saws, and we’ve always cut angles.” This device is so precise, in fact, according to Chow, implants and artificial parts are fitting better, making this type of knee surgery less invasive and less painful.
For Lammers, who underwent the procedure in 2010, his healing time was made in record speed. “I was walking on stairs at the hospital the same day,” says Lammers. And get this, within 30 days he was competing again, making Makoplasty an easy winner in his book, “Right now I'm better than 100 plus.”
Paolo Benevento is a freelance writer in Phoenix, Ariz. For more info on Makoplasty, visit St. Luke’s website
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