Nujiang, China --- Four cases of robot-assisted total knee arthroplasty (TKA) have been successfully completed recently in the People's Hospital of Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture with Honghu Orthopedic Surgical Robot ("Honghu") independently developed by MicroPort NaviBot（Suzhou）Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Shanghai MicroPort MedBot (Group) Co., Ltd. The operation was performed by Hongcai He, Director of Trauma Cardiothoracic Surgery of People's Hospital of Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture, and Jingdong Yang, Director of Bone Neurosurgery, and Professor Chuan Li of No. 920 Hospital. Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture is a “hard bone” included in the poverty –alleviation strategy of “Three Regions and Three Prefectures” stricken by poverty regionally, conditionally and qualitatively. It takes a special and important position in the overall situation of poverty alleviation in China and is one of the regions that President Xi Jinping is mostly concerned about. In response to the call of President Xi Jinping, Honghu of MicroPort^®MedBot^® has flown far across to Nujiang, where four successive robot-assisted TKA cases completed with Chinese-developed surgery robot, achieving the hope of accessing the high-quality medical resources -- inclusive smart medical care -- to different levels of medical institutions, improving the medical services in regional and remote areas, and benefiting more patients with the advanced and high-quality orthopedic surgery solutions.

Patients of the case are: 1) a 72-year-old female, who had suffered from repeated right knee joint pain in recent 3 years, with obvious pain, and gradually suffered from slight varus flexion and extension limitation of knee joint and difficulty in walking; 2) a 75-year-old female, who had repeatedly suffered from bilateral knee joint pain in recent 20 years, especially obvious when walking. The longest walking distance on the flat road was about 1,000 meters, and the pain was severe when going up and down stairs, which gradually leads to knee joint flexion deformity and inability of knee joint to straighten up; 3) a 59-year-old male, who had repeatedly suffered from bilateral knee joint pain in recent 4 years, which was obvious on the right side. He received the daily oral analgesic treatment but his knee joint flexion and extension activities were gradually limited and walking became difficult, and 4) a 67-year-old female patient, who had suffered from bilateral knee joint pain repeatedly for more than 7 years, as her daily activities were limited, she could not climb up and down stairs.

Before the operation, Professor Chuan Li worked out a careful surgical plan with the surgical team of the People's Hospital of Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture, and communicated patiently with the family members of patients repeatedly. The surgical team decided to adopt Honghu to assist in the TKA, and made a personalized surgical solution by performing CT 3D reconstruction of knee joint for patients with Honghu. The human-computer interactive surgical platform guided the robotic arm registration and bone registration nimbly during the surgery, the robotic arms accurately moved to the preplanned position, assisted Director Hongcai He and Director Jingdong Yang in osteotomy of femur and tibia.

Postoperative measurement shows that the actual osteotomy is completely consistent with the planned value. The operating interface of surgery robot is very user-friendly. It respects the doctors' traditional surgical habits and has a short learning curve.

Jingdong Yang, Director of the Department of Neurosurgery, said: "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 the prostheses in a more reasonable position. Meanwhile, it is unnecessary to open the femoral canal in a robot-assisted surgery, and the patient suffered less bleeding and less trauma. The osteotomic operation was accurate, and the patient restored to a satisfactory lower limb force line after the surgery. Compared with the traditional TKA, the robot-assisted TKA can help orthopedic surgeons solve the traditional problems of "invisibility", "inaccuracy" and "instability" in operation, and achieve higher operation accuracy.”