Abstract
INTRODUCTION
Adult reconstructive orthopedic surgery in the United States is facing an imminent logjam due to the increasing divergence of the demand for services and the ability for the community to supply those services. In combination with several other factors, a perfect storm is brewing that may leave the system overtaxed and the patient population suffering from either a lack of treatment, or treatment by less qualified providers. A key component to improving the overall efficiency of surgical care is to introduce enabling technologies that can effectively increase the throughput while simultaneously improving the quality of care. One such enabling technology that has proven itself in many industries is robotics, which has recently been introduced in surgery with even more recent applications in orthopedic surgery. A surgeon interactive robotic arm has been developed for partial knee arthroplasty (PKA) and total hip arthroplasty (THA). This study aims to analyse the efficiency of a new robotic technology for use in orthopaedic surgery.
METHODS
18 robotic arm assisted PKA's across 10 sites were recorded to accurately capture the timeline elemental tasks throughout the procedure. Two camera angles were set up to capture both surgical staff group dynamics and individual procedural steps. 17 tasks were identified and measured from video data. (Fig 1) The robotic arm specific tasks were analyzed for correlation to total surgical time (measured as first incision to last suture). The tasks for the surgeons with the shortest and longest total times were compared directly to determine areas of opportunity.
RESULTS
Average total time across 18 surgeries was 55 ± 19 min (range: 30–98 min). There was no correlation between bone registration time and total time (p=0.271) and no correlation between femoral burring time and total time (p=0.230). Per task time comparison of the two surgeons exhibited an average time variation of 3.5 min per task (range: 0.7–8.4 min) (Fig 2). The robotic elements of the procedure exhibited an average time variation of 3.3 min per task while the non robotic elements of the procedure (boxed) exhibited an average time variation of 3.8 min per task.
CONCLUSION
Our preliminary results indicate that introducing robotic technology in to the OR does not directly lead to an increase in total surgical time. On average, non robotic specific elements of the procedure exhibited a larger opportunity for efficiency gain. This is likely due to the fact that a large population of surgeon users are not only new to the robotic technology, but new to PKA. Further video collection and analysis will lead to an efficiency benchmarking program that aims to establish methods for best practices in achieving efficiency throughout a robotic arm assisted PKA procedure.
