The hospital on Monday celebrated its 100th knee replacement surgery done with the ROSA Knee System, a robotically-assisted surgical system for total knee replacement surgery. It lets surgeons to use computer and software technology to be less invasive and allow for greater precision during surgeries.

For the Reynolds Memorial orthopedic surgical team of Dr. Michael Scheel and Dr. Michael Myers, the new surgical system has raised the process to another level. Scheel said he has performed around 1,000 knee replacements in his career. What the ROSA system allows him to do is map out the cuts he wants to make. Myers likened it to a “measure twice, cut once” scenario.

Scheel said the system, which has been at Reynolds for less than a year, allows surgeons to see what kind of impact the cuts could have on the balance of the knee, the stability of the implants, the tracking and the range of motion.

“And we can do all of that before we even make the cuts,” Scheel said. “Then the really neat part that I found out, that I didn’t really know about until this technology became available here, we can interoperatively validate what we thought we did. So we can actually take a tool and the robot will tell us if we cut where we thought we cut, if we cut the right angle and the right depth before we ever put any implants.”

By being less invasive, the surgeons said, patients are home convalescing much earlier than before, many the day after surgery. There’s less post-operative pain, thus less reliance on pain medications. They’re also seeing patients’ function returning more quickly.

“Our goal is to diminish outliers,” Myers said. “As we diminish outliers, that should drive our patient satisfaction as we get better patient satisfaction, then we should get better results. So that’s the overall reason that we’re using it, is hopefully improved results.”

What makes everyone at WVU Medicine happy is that patients can take advantage of cutting-edge technology much closer to home than before. The health system’s goal is to bring high quality medical care to the Ohio Valley, and machines like ROSA can assist with that.

“We are so proud of our team on their completion of the 100th ROSA assisted knee replacement,” says WVU Medicine Reynolds Memorial Hospital COO, Tony Martinelli. “Combining these advanced robotics with the incredible staff at WVU Medicine Reynolds allows us to provide the best possible care for the residents of the Ohio Valley.”