Friday, September 18, 2020
After COVID-19 lockdowns, knee pain is a common complaint as we get back into seasonal sports, or even if you’re a weekend warrior and you injure your knee or need a knee replacement.
Dr. James Stefanski, an orthopedic surgeon at OrthoCincy, is now part of a team there offering high-tech assistance to help repair and replace knee joints. His team is now using a number of things to help you feel better and reduce long-term recovery, including the Mako Robotic-arm assisted technology.
"I have an emphasis in incorporation of technology in new up-and-coming procedures,” said Dr. Stefanski. “One thing I have extensive training in is cartilage restoration procedures, cartilage transplants, meniscus transplants and, for the folks who aren’t able to be salvaged, I offer robotic knee replacement for a level of precision that's unmatched by the human hand.
"The robot can analyze in surgery the tension on all your ligaments and having a well-balanced knee, meaning not too tight, not too loose, is what leads people to be happy with their outcome long-term, so by being able to measure the tension on the ligaments, we can adjust our cuts to a fraction of the millimeter on the bone and adjust our position of our components within a fraction of a millimeter to get everything perfectly balanced to get optimal outcomes long-term.”
Now one of the things to remember with all of this is that getting evaluated early on in your knee pain gives you more options for treatment, including some of these high-tech options.