Lateral Approach in Robotic Assisted Knee Joint Arthroplasty

Recently, computer-aided robotic systems, such as Robodoc^® system and Makoplasty^® system, have been used to enable surgeons to improve the accuracy of cutting and alignment in knee and hip arthroplasty [1,2,3]. The incision is normally done at the anterior part of the knee and the cutting is performed from the frontal direction during the TKA because enough working space of the tools is required during cutting process. Currently minimal invasive surgery (MIS) is the most popular keyword in the arthroplasty [4], and at this moment the MIS could not be performed common in the TKA using the robotic system. This MIS TKA could be achieved in lateral direction, and different cutting process also changes the robot configuration, which mainly affect the system accuracy. In this study, we investigated what additional advantages could be achieved in the bone cutting process laterally using laboratory-level less-invasive TKA surgical robot system.