Accuracy of Measuring Knee Flexion after TKA through Wearable IMU Sensors.

Wearable sensors have the potential to facilitate remote monitoring for patients recovering from knee replacement surgery. Using IMU sensors attached to the patients' leg, knee flexion can be monitored while the patients are recovering in their home environment. Ideally, these flexion angle measurements will have an accuracy and repeatability at least on par with current clinical standards.

How to Quantitatively Balance a Total Knee? A Surgical Algorithm to Assure Balance and Control Alignment.

To achieve a balanced total knee, various surgical corrections can be performed, while intra-operative sensors and surgical navigation provide quantitative, patient-specific feedback. To understand the impact of these corrections, this paper evaluates the quantitative impact of both soft tissue releases and bone recuts on knee balance and overall limb alignment. This was achieved by statistically analyzing the alignment and load readings before and after each surgical correction performed on 479 consecutive primary total knees.

Achieving a Balanced Knee in Robotic TKA.

Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) surgery with manual instruments provides a quantitatively balanced knee in approximately 50% of cases. This study examined the effect of combining robotics technology with real-time intra-operative sensor feedback on the number of quantitatively balanced cases in a consecutive series of 200 robotic-assisted primary TKAs. The robotics platform was used to plan the implant component position using correctable poses in extension and a manual, centrally pivoting the balancer in flexion, prior to committing to the femoral cuts.

The application of machine learning to balance a total knee arthroplasty.

Aims: The use of technology to assess balance and alignment during total knee surgery can provide an overload of numerical data to the surgeon. Meanwhile, this quantification holds the potential to clarify and guide the surgeon through the surgical decision process when selecting the appropriate bone recut or soft tissue adjustment when balancing a total knee. Therefore, this paper evaluates the potential of deploying supervised machine learning (ML) models to select a surgical correction based on patient-specific intra-operative assessments.

Robotic Total Knee Arthroplasty: Surgical Assistant for a Customized Normal Kinematic Knee.

Although current total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is considered a highly successful surgical procedure, patients undergoing TKA can still experience substantial functional impairment and increased revision rates as compared with those undergoing total hip arthroplasty. Robotic-assisted surgery has been available clinically for almost 15 years and was developed, in part, to address these concerns. Robotic-assisted surgery aims to improve TKA by enhancing the surgeon's ability to optimize soft tissue balancing, reproduce alignment, and restore normal knee kinematics.