Surgical plan options for robotic machining

Abstract

A method of performing surgery on a bone includes providing a robotically controlled bone preparation system and creating at least one hole in the bone with the robotically controlled bone preparation system prior to machining the bone. The bone hole aligns with a hole or a post in a guide for a manual cutting tool. If the robot fails during surgery, or if the surgeon does not wish to complete the procedure with the robot, the guide is attached to the bone after aligning the guide hole with the bone hole. The surgery is completed manually after the guide is attached to the bone, and the robot is not used after the guide is attached to the bone.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to surgical options for navigated and / or robotic bone machining and in particular relates to having the option of completing joint arthroplasty procedures with conventional instruments following the use of navigated and / or robot based applications.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]In a traditional joint arthroplasty procedure, such as a total knee arthroplasty (“TKA”) surgery, diseased bone and / or cartilage of a patient is generally removed and replaced with a prosthetic implant. A surgeon may resect the bone using a hand-held oscillating saw blade which results in a series of planar bone surfaces. Additionally, the surgeon may use a drill, broach or tamp instrument to make cylindrical holes into the bone in order to accommodate fixation features on the implant. The planar bone surfaces and cylindrical bone holes, for example, are generally oriented to interface with flat surfaces and pegs or keels of a prosthetic implant.[000...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0016]In yet another embodiment of the invention, a method of performing surgery on a bone includes providing a robotically controlled bone preparation system to make bone resections. The method may also include operating the robotically controlled bone preparation system to machine the bone to have features corresponding to features of a surgical instrument, wherein the robotic machining has at least one of increased accuracy, reproducibility, and speed compared to manual resections. The method may further include manually completing the surgery on the bone without further use of the robotically controlled bone preparation system, including the step of manually coupling the surgical instrument to the bone.

Problems solved by technology

This plan may involve, for example, precise non-planar cuts that would be difficult or even impossible for a surgeon to make manually.

While such a robotic plan may provide for potential advantages over traditional manual plans using conventional tools and planar cuts, there is always a possibility that the robot may fail at any point during surgery.

If the robot fails mid-surgery, for example, the surgeon may need to use conventional instrumentation to complete the particular procedure.

However, this may be difficult as bone has already been removed by the robot, generally with non-planar cuts.

While conventional instrumentation is generally used in conjunction with planar cuts and with pre-drilled reference points, making the use of conventional instruments to finish the surgery with non-planar cuts at this point would be difficult.

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