Robotic assisted knee replacement surgery at the Yorkshire Clinic – don’t let knee pain ruin your life
Orthopaedic surgeons at The Yorkshire Clinic have been trained in the use of a special ROSA knee system – a robotic technology which can assist them with total knee replacements.
The knee is one of the most complex joints in the body, but wear and tear, arthritis or injury can leave people with pain and limited mobility.
Often the cartilage between the knee cap (patella) and the bones it connects to (the thigh and shin bones) wears away. The pain can be severe and flexibility of the joint is diminished. Replacing the knee joint with an artificial one has long been a successful form of surgery. It has been suggested that robotic surgery is linked to reduced pain, lower use of pain relief, fewer physiotherapy sessions and an overall improved knee function following surgery.
Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon Mr James Hahnel, of The Yorkshire Clinic in BingleyTraditionally knee replacement surgery has been about getting rid of patient’s pain, whereas now what we are trying to focus on is not just getting rid of their pain, but also improving their function.
Mr James Hahnel added that the robot assisted with the surgery, acting as ‘a very accurate eye’ to take measurements and place pins in the thigh and shin bones, and assess the patient’s personal anatomy, so that the replacement knee can be implanted extremely accurately. “It means a knee replacement which functions better, is more stable and feels more like their own natural knee,” he said. He said patients who had the surgery would be able to walk at home unassisted after just a couple of weeks, be completely free of a walking stick by about six weeks and that the majority were completely pain free after a year.
Why robotic surgery?
“In terms of the difference between recovery of a robotic assisted knee replacement and a traditional knee replacement I think you will find that the short term recovery is very similar – we do knee replacements very well already,” said Mr Hahnel. “But we want to do them even better so what we are looking at is the long term functionality; the ability to go back to playing sports, going for long walks, for stability within the knee and that is why we are doing this.”
Getting your life back
Mr Hahnel said patients he had treated had been able to return to things they loved doing – one had cycled from Land’s End to John O’Groats whilst another had returned to competitive golf.
One such patient is Brian Laban, who said he had lived with knee problems for 10 years and had had key-hole surgery and steroid injections to try to improve his mobility and manage the pain.
Brian LabanI was living on painkillers. It impacted me immensely because I could not drive, I could not walk much more than a few minutes without pain. But only a few weeks after I had it done, I’m not in any pain whatsoever.
“Now I feel a lot younger and I can get on with my life, it’s really changed my life,” he said. “I can go for walks again and enjoy holidays walking around the town and on the beach, which I couldn’t do before.”
Find out more
For more information on robotic knee surgery at The Yorkshire Clinic, visit the website here.