A new study published in Spine assesses the radiation exposure during robot-guided vertebral body augmentation compared to fluoroscopy.
The researchers examined 33 patients with 60 vertebral compression fractures that underwent robot-guided vertebral body augmentation with two surgeons simultaneously injecting cement at two levels under pulsed fluoroscopy. The average preoperative computed tomographic dose was 50 mSv with average operative time of 118 minutes.
The average robotic guidance took 36 minutes and the average operative radiation time was 46.1 seconds per level. The researchers found average surgeon and staff exposure time per augmented level was 37.6 seconds with an execution and accuracy rate of 99 percent.
The researchers concluded that "radiation exposure of the surgeon and the operating room staff in a series of robot-assisted vertebral body augmentation was 74 percent lower than published results on fluoroscopy guidance and approximately 50 percent lower than the literature on navigated augmentation," according to the report.
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