Mazor Robotics Ltd, a developer of surgical robots and complementing products, recently announced that Spine has published the results from a study that found the companys SpineAssist to be clinically accurate in 98% of implant placements in spinal surgery.
By comparison, free-hand implant placements are documented in the literature to be misplaced in about 10% of cases. Additionally, the study demonstrated that SpineAssist contributes to significantly lower rates of misplaced screws and neurological deficits than free-hand procedures.
The study was based on clinical experience obtained from more than 840 cases performed in 14 hospitals in the US, Germany, and Israel between June 2005 and June 2009.
49% of the cases reported in the study used a minimally invasive approach. Overall, 3,271 pedicle screws and guide-wires were inserted in 635 patients. 98% of these were found to be clinically acceptable by fluoroscopic images.
In the study, none of the patients operated on with SpineAssist experienced any long term neurological deficits. Moreover, neurological deficits were observed in only four cases (0.5%), and following revisions were completely repaired. This is in sharp contrast to the 0.6% – 5% of neurological damage reported in the literature, when performed free-hand.
The SpineAssist system consists of a robotic device that mounts above the patients spine and a workstation running advanced surgical planning software. The system is both FDA cleared and CE marked.
