Syed Ahmed Discusses How Hip Replacement Surgery Using Mako SmartRobotics Can Benefit Patients

Consultant Orthopaedic Hip Surgeon, Mr Syed Ahmed, shares his insight into the benefits of Mako Robotic Arm Assisted Surgery for hip replacement procedures.

In this informative video, Mr Syed Ahmed sheds light on the advanced technology and precision offered by Mako Robotic Arm Assisted Surgery. With his expertise and experience in hip surgery, he explains how this innovative system enhances patient recovery.

Hi, I’m Syed Ahmed. I’m a consultant hip surgeon here at KIMS Hospital.

The hip joint is a ball inside a socket and it’s lined by cartilage and when that cartilage wears out, one experiences a significant amount of pain, especially in the groin and on simple movements such as going up and down stairs, getting in and out of the car become increasingly difficult and painful.

So in hip replacement surgery, you get rid of the arthritic ball part of the hip. You replace this with a ceramic or a metal ball and you resurface the socket with a shell and then there’s a strong plastic liner or a ceramic liner that sits inside it.

So in conventional hip replacements, the patient usually has an X-ray, and then we plan the hip replacement on 2D planning using this X-ray. The big difference with robotic hip replacements, and especially with the MAKO, is that you’re using a CT scan to be able to 3D plan where you want to put the implants. You’re then able to plan and individualise surgery to the patient’s native anatomy and what you can then do is plan the correct implant sizes where exactly you want to put the implants in order to prevent impingement. And you then get to see this live plan on the screen while you’re performing the surgery. And what really it’s giving you is live information as you’re doing the surgery.

With the robotic hip replacements what we’re hoping is now that we are replicating native anatomy and you’re able to correct leg length discrepancies to the millimetre and put the implants in a position where there’s no impingement, that one can recover quicker. There’s less soft tissue damage during the surgery, and patients can go back not only to walking comfortably, but also leading an extremely active lifestyle, doing all the activities that they enjoy doing prior to having a degenerate hip.

In the long term, we don’t have 10-15 year results, but with placing the implants in an ideal position, one would hope that this reduces wear in the long term and there’s less likelihood of patients requiring a revision surgery in the future.