Busamed unveils robotic surgery assistant

It is a first not only for the city, but for the entire province: the Lowveld’s first-ever Robotic Surgery Assistant, ROSA, is now in operation at Busamed Lowveld Private Hospital.
ROSA, created and manufactured by Zimmer Biomet, has already helped the orthopedic surgeons at Busamed successfully perform 20 knee replacement surgeries, from its installation in the beginning of February.

Busamed Lowveld Private Hospital’s orthopedic surgeons, Dr Alex Kuhn and Dr Dimitri Dimitriou, did the initial cases with Dr Kevin Steyn, and other colleagues to follow.
A demonstration of how the ROSA works and assists the surgeons, was carried out at the hospital on Saturday morning. Zimmer Biomet’s connect sales manager, Johan Zwiegelaar, gave an overview of the future of robotics in orthopedic surgery. He said there are over 700 ROSA Robotic Assistants globally, and 14 are currently being used in South Africa.He said the ROSA had helped perform over 700 knee replacements in 2022 in South Africa alone, and that there had also been a few hip replacements done. Surgeons at Busamed Lowveld Private Hospital will be using the ROSA for hip and shoulder surgery by the end of this year.

Dr Kuhn and Dr Dimitriou also spoke about the ROSA’s use in their operating rooms thus far. They emphasised that the ROSA is a robotic assistant utilised during surgery, and rather assists in ensuring a more accurately placed knee replacement rather than taking over as the surgeon.
The ROSA does not work without the surgeon prompting it to do so, and the doctors at Busamed Lowveld Private Hospital have been specially trained on how to use this assistant.
Dr Kuhn said the doctors teach the ROSA the alignment of the leg that is being operated on, the degrees of movement and its alignment, and what these should be post-surgery.
Dr Kuhn then explained how the ROSA works. Data on the unique anatomy and anatomical defects of the specific patient is fed to the robot by sensors. This data is then computered to determine the precise bone cuts and to balance the knee joints’ ligaments, to optimise positioning of the prosthesis.

The robotic arm then assists the surgeon in performing the bony resection. The surgical procedure is still performed by the surgeon with assistance of the ROSA only.
Dr Dimitriou then demonstrated on a model how the ROSA functions, explaining that it continuously checks the surgical steps. “The arm makes sure that what the surgeon plans for the outcome of the surgery, will be what he achieves,” said Dr Kuhn.
The implementation of the ROSA at Busamed Lowveld Private Hospital represents a significant advancement in the field of orthopedic surgery in the Lowveld, as it provides surgeons with greater precision in replacement surgery, and this helps to improve patient outcomes.

Additionally, orthopedic robotics have enabled rapid recovery pathways that could result in same-day discharge or patients spending only one night in hospital.
Visit www.busamed.co.za/Lowveld.