Dali, China --- The first total knee arthroplasty (TKA) of MicroPort^® MedBot^®-assisted TKA multi-center research was successfully completed in Dali First People's Hospital on 17 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^®). The surgery was jointly performed by Professor Jiyuan Zhang's team and Professor Chuan Li. Honghu can apply the traditional surgical experience to the digital surgical planning. For doctors who use robots for the first time, Honghu has short learning curves of TKA, and the robotic arms show strong stability and high accuracy during operation. This enhances the confidence of operators and provides advanced orthopedic surgical solutions to more patients.

 This patient in the case is a 53-year-old woman with limb pain and limited activities for more than 20 years. The pain has worsened in the past year and the joints of limbs and knees suffered obvious pain and limited movement after walking. When admitted into hospital, she was diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis and acquired foot deformity.

 The relatively complicated conditions and severe rheumatoid arthritis of the patient added to the difficulty of surgery. After careful evaluation and confirmation of the preoperative plan, Professor Jiyuan Zhang decided to use Honghu to assist the case of TKA. As the tibial plateau bone mass was lost, the conventionally-planned 8mm osteotomy was reduced by 1.5mm when planning the platform osteotomy customizedly before operation to avoid excessive platform resection. 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, and the whole operation was completed smooth and stable.

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

 Professor Jiyuan Zhang commented after the operation: ‘The humanized operation interface of Honghu not only respects doctors' traditional operation habits, but also provides a short learning curve. Compared with the traditional surgery, the 3D preoperative planning function of robot is powerful, allowing doctors to collect more patient information during surgery and implant prostheses more accurately. Meanwhile, it is unnecessary to open the medullary space in a robot-assisted surgery, the osteotomy is accurate, and the patient suffered less bleeding and less trauma. The robot successfully completed a high-difficulty surgery at its first show. It has greatly enhanced my confidence in the Chinese-developed orthopedic surgery robot. I hope more doctors will have the opportunity to use Honghu for the benefit of patients.’