Beijing, China --- The first robot-assisted total knee arthroplasty (TKA) was successfully completed in the No. 4 Medical Center of the General Hospital of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) (formerly 304 Hospital) on 18 January, 2022 with Honghu Orthopedic Surgical Robot ("Honghu") independently developed by Suzhou MicroPort OrthoBot Co., Ltd. (MicroPort^® OrthoBot) – a subsidiary of Shanghai MicroPort MedBot (Group) Co., Ltd. (MicroPort^® MedBot^®). Honghu has a powerful 3D preoperative planning function, which can perform 3D reconstruction of joints based on preoperative CT images of patients, and provide patients with the operative plan for personalized prosthesis implantation. Honghu is provided with the China-developed robotic arm, which can resect bones through precise operation. It is unnecessary to open the medullary space during the surgery. The patient suffered less bleeding and less trauma and can restore the force line of lower limbs.

 The patient in this case is a 68-year-old man who has suffered pain in both knees for 20 years and aggravated with dyskinesia for 1 year. He suffered claudication with swelling in both knees. When hospitalized, the patient was diagnosed as having osteoarthritis in both knees (severer in the left), and was recommended to receive TKA of the left knee.

 Before the TKA, the operator performed CT 3D reconstruction of the knee joint with Honghu for the patient, and formulated a personalized surgical solution. The human-computer interactive surgical platform of Honghu guided the robotic arm registration and bone registration nimbly during the surgery, the robotic arms accurately located to the expected planned position, assisted in the osteotomy of femur and tibia and the matching with micro-invasive orthopedic internal axle knee prosthesis, and the whole operation was completed smoothly and efficiently.

 Postoperative measurement shows that the actual osteotomy is completely consistent with the planned value. The patient recovered fast after the operation. It can be seen in the full-length radiograph of the lower limb that the force line had been accurately recovered, which proved the precise and efficient characteristics of Honghu.

 The surgeon commented after the operation: ‘the surgery has been completed successfully with Honghu, and the operation process was smooth and efficient. Compared with the traditional surgery, Honghu can reconstruct the patient's joints in 3D based on CT images and achieve more accurate and personalized prosthetic placement. Personalized adjustment may be conducted during the operation according to the patient's soft tissue condition to realize the gap balance. It is a higher level of technology for the diagnosis and treatment of joint arthroplasty.’

Ms. Haiying Yu, General Manager of MicroPort^® OrthoBot, remarked: ‘Under the leadership of the Orthopaedics Department of the No. 4 Medical Center of the General Hospital of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, the TKA has been successfully completed with Honghu in the first 3A hospital in North China. The stability and operation experience of Honghu Orthopedic Surgical Robot presented during the surgery have been recognized by experts, which is of great significance for Honghu's nationwide promotion. Meanwhile, it has put forward higher requirements for Honghu's performance and team service ability. It is hoped that robot-assisted surgery can quickly empower the intellegent medical care and benefit the majority of patients.’