Image Credit: Morristown-Hamblen Healthcare system
NAGPUR: Dr Mukesh Laddha, an orthopaedic surgeon at the Rathi Nursing Home (RNH) for the first time in city and region has conducted robotic knee replacement surgeries. He conducted 12 surgeries in a month before presenting his work in public domain.
“We are happy that Union minister Nitin Gadkari inaugurated our facility. He was pleased to see the RNH using state of art technology for the patients’ benefit,” said Dr Dilip Rathi of RNH while presenting the work of Dr Laddha.
Dr Laddha said that the 12 patients of different age groups, including outstation patients, were operated using robot assisted surgery. “It requires skill for using a robot. But with robotic surgery the precision in surgery makes it perfect. The surgery is done on customized basis as the joints are prepared as per the requirement of each patient and gives them a feeling of natural joint while walking. It also has advantage of having very little blood loss. The adjoining soft tissues are not touched during robotic surgery,” he added.
Since the surgery is minimal invasive it reduces the hospitalization time of the patient. Patient can walk on his own on the third day of the surgery. Though the cost of the operation increases by about 25,000 per patient, the doctors say it is worth it with the advantages associated with robotic surgery.
The conventional surgery did not give consistent results, had more blood loss and required more hospitalization period. The rehabilitation in traditional operation was also more. Dr Laddha added that the robotic surgery besides being precise and accurate did not require as much rehabilitation.
Modern robots he said are surgeon friendly and help the doctor to make the replaced joined as much as his natural one. In fact in near future the knee replacements will be replaced by knee or joint resurfacing in which the entire joint is not involved. Only a part of the joint is cut and resurfaced to put the person on his toes much faster.