A landmark new study investigating the cause of common, persistent pain in patients following a Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA) is being funded by the Ramsay Hospital Research Foundation.
A third of Australians over the age of 65 will have knee osteoarthritis significant enough to affect their quality of life. TKA is a common operation for these patients designed to reduce pain and improve joint function. However, up to 20% of patients report some dissatisfaction following their operation.
Dr Samuel MacDessi (pictured, below), chairman of Orthopaedics at St George Private Hospital and founding partner of Sydney Knee Specialists, said the Robotic Assisted Surgery in Kinematic Alignment – or RASKAL – study will assess the effectiveness of recent surgical developments – robotic-assisted surgery and kinematic alignment – and compare them to the current gold standard of surgical care (computer-assisted surgery and mechanical alignment).
The trial aims to determine if there is a difference in pre- and post-operative patient outcomes between the surgical groups.
“We know that the most beneficial treatment for when patients have end stage arthritis is that of total knee replacement surgery,” said Dr MacDessi said.
“While it’s successful for the majority of people who undergo the surgery, there’s still a fifth of people who report some level of dissatisfaction from the operation.”
“This is going to be a landmark trial that will tell us whether the use of robotics in knee replacement surgery will improve the outcomes for patients so that it can potentially be used on a more routine basis in the future.
“This trial is important for not just solving one major issue, that is ‘do robots make a difference’, but also, is this new method of aligning knees better than the current technique that’s been used for 45 years?
“The information that we’re able to attain from this study is going to help patients in the future by determining whether robotics becomes the standardised approach for everyone having a knee replacement.”
