Robotic surgery has been a hot topic in the field of musculoskeletal care over the last decade, as both orthopedic and spine robot technology continues to advance.
While robots can currently perform several functions, from navigation to preoperative planning, their full potential has not yet been realized, according to Daniel Sciubba, MD, senior vice president of neurosurgery at Northwell and co-executive director of the Northwell Spine Institute based in New Hyde Park, N.Y.
Dr. Sciubba spoke with Becker's about the possibility of new uses for surgical robots, and what he hopes the future of implants and pre-operative planning will look like.
Dr. Sciubba: Hot topics right now are patient-specific implants, which are fascinating, in the sense that I am, right now a men's medium shirt. Don't get me a large or small shirt, because it won't fit. So why are we giving all patients the same implant construction when we're all different?
In pediatrics, they give drugs weight-based, but when you're an adult, we give all the same doses. That's silly, because what we're finding is not only are we different from each other and we have different strains on our body, but my body will be different in 20 years than it is now. A lot of us are now doing dynamic imaging, so we make people walk through a system and see how they move their body and plan spine operations based on their specific needs. Someone who walks in a certain way, or is top or bottom heavy, that is more important than just putting a screw in their back. Not just patient specific implants, but patient specific planning.
The next thing people are excited about is robotics, which are becoming better. In the next year or two, we'll see advancements in the scope of robotics. Right now, robotics are becoming the standard of care in other surgical fields outside of spine. Spine has been relegated to placing implants and screws. The next software platforms I've seen have robotics doing more. More opportunities for drilling, removing bone, reconstruction that weren't there before. For some reason, spine has been slow on that, but we'll see some of those changes happen. Science fiction will come true and meet surgical robotics, and robots will do part of the surgical work. Right now, they're just doing navigation. So robotics has been nice, but it hasn't been a game changer, yet. I think the next iteration will be more advanced.