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S AINT ANNE'S HOSPITAL'S Center for Orthopedic Excellence has more than 30 orthopedic specialists, nurse practitioners and physician assistants, who form an expert network spanning Bristol County, Massachusetts. From the main hospital campus in Fall River to Saint Anne's Hospital Ambulatory Surgery Center in Dartmouth and the Southern New England Surgery Center in Attleboro, the Center offers specialized expertise and a high standard of care across the orthopedic spectrum, including pedi- atrics, sports medicine, hand and shoulder surgery, and total joint reconstruction. Steward Health Care's commitment to advanced medicine facilitates the offering of leading surgical technologies; cutting- edge anesthesia combined with a robust multidisciplinary team assisting with the patient's rapid recovery; and, for some patients, outpatient total joint replace- ment. The exciting advanced care offered at Saint Anne's includes MAKOplasty for joint replacement; cutting-edge approaches for hip replacement; and computer and 3-D modeling for shoulder replacement. A Robotic Assistant Conventional total knee replacement is an excellent option for patients who suffer from osteoarthritis infiltrating all three compartments of the knee, but for a subset of patients with early- to mid-stage focal disease — arthritic invasion in only one or two compartments — total knee replacement isn't a viable option, according to Jerald W. Katz, MD, Chair of Orthopedics at Saint Anne's Hospital. "Previously, those with focal disease didn't have a great option to treat uni- or bi-compartmental arthritis," he explains. "It was hard to find a good treatment that would last a long time. In fact, some younger patients were told to wait until they were older and have a total knee replacement, which is unacceptable if there's constant pain in the knee. MAKOplasty gives us the ability to provide this patient popula- tion relief through a unicompartmental knee replacement." The centerpiece of MAKOplasty technol- ogy is the RIO Robotic Arm Interactive System, which features a computer platform interfaced with a robotic arm that sur- geons guide to remove arthritic surfaces in the knee. Two weeks before surgery, patients undergo a CT scan that surgeons upload into RIO, which creates a 3-D virtual map of the knee, enabling orthopedic surgeons to size and place components and create an operative plan. "During surgery, we place markers in the anatomy that register with the computer," Dr. Katz says. "The computer registers where the knee is in space and compares it to the preoperative CT scan. This allows us to balance ligaments and fine-tune component placement intraoperatively, which results in perfect positioning — 100 percent of the time, the component is exactly where it ought to be. I've been using this technique since 2011, and so far the results have been amazing." Advances in Hip Replacement Orthopedic surgeons at Saint Anne's Hospita l 's Center for Or t hopedic Excellence offer several techniques to improve outcomes and speed recovery from hip surgeries. These techniques are MAKOplasty and direct-anterior-approach Saint Anne's Hospital: Orthopedic Care That Keeps Patients Moving AT SAINT ANNE'S HOSPITAL'S CENTER FOR ORTHOPEDIC EXCELLENCE, TECHNOLOGIES AND PRACTICES ARE INNOVATIVE AND CARE IS PATIENT-CENTERED. By Michael Ferguson COURTESY OF SAINT ANNE'S HOSPITAL COV ER FE AT UR E Saint Anne's Hospital's Center for Orthopedic Excellence was the first hospital in Massachusetts to offer MAKOplasty using the RIO robotic-arm technology for partial knee resurfacing (seen here in use by David Bullis, MD). 6 | Greater Boston MD NEWS ■ M D N E W S . CO M