Knee replacement surgery can mean a long and painful recovery. Now there's something to shorten it up. It involves robotics, which has improved many surgeries. And thanks to this technology, a Wisconsin man is back to all his activities after being sidelined for seven years.
Just a few months ago, going for a bike ride was not an option for Paul Komlodi. Most days, terrible knee pain kept him isolated to the couch, "It became so debilitating that i'd come home from work and throw an ice pack on my leg and that was it. I didn't move. I didn't go anywhere. I wasn't able to do anything with my family, my children. It got to the point that it hurt to just get up off the couch."
But a recent knee surgery has given the 53-year-old his active lifestyle back. He had a new robotic partial knee replacement called MAKOplasty. The surgery combines 3-D images of the patients' knee with global positioning-like technology, to precisely align the surgeon-guided robot. It's much more accurate than conventional knee surgeries. "The actual burr is attached to a robotic arm that I'm in control of, but because it's linked to the computer, and the computer knows the plan of exactly where I want to remove bone, it will not let me remove bone outside of those parameters," says Dr. Daniel Holub, or Orthopaedic Associates of Wisconsin.
A smaller incision means a faster recovery for patients like Paul, "He was looking for a somewhat easier option and a quicker recovery so he could get on with his life," says Dr. Holub.
And Paul was back to being active in less than two months, "I'm back bicycling, already I've started to do some walking. I come up and down the stairs. It's just a total difference, night and day - between what I can do and what I couldn't do before and I only see the future going better."
This procedure was done at Oconomowoc Memorial Hospital. For more information, check out www.prohealthcare.org
