New Delhi, Aug 9 (PTI) A retired army personnel got a new lease of life after undergoing a robotic-assisted kneecap joint replacement surgery at a private facility here, hospital authorities said on Monday.

The surgery took place on July 27 giving relief to the patient, Rohtas Singh, who had been suffering from acute knee pain for the past five years, doctors said.

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The operation took place at Aakash Healthcare, Dwarka, and the hospital in a statement, claimed that it was "north India's first robotic-assisted kneecap joint replacement surgery".

Doctors at Aakash hospital here have successfully conducted north India's first robotic patellofemoral joint (PFJ) replacement surgery on the kneecap of the 58-year-old man from Haryana, it said.

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Singh, who was a subedar in the Indian Army, was suffering from acute knee pain for the past five years and was referred to the hospital from Bhiwani, hospital authorities said.

The robotic patellofemoral joint replacement surgery accurately cuts the knee bones and prepares the joints for securing the new implant very precisely. Robotics in knee surgery is a very recent advancement, although robotics is a well-known and established method of treatment for various gastrointestinal, urology, and oncological procedures, doctors said.

This surgery is unique, not only because it helped the patient retain most of his natural knee and enabled him walk within two hours of the surgery, but also required insertion of a smaller implant and reduced the surgical time by 30 minutes, doctors said.

Isolated patellofemoral joint (PFJ) arthritis is not very common, and it affects one in 10 people in India, they said.

Conducting a robotic PFJ surgery also helped avoid the complications of a total knee replacement (TKR), hospital authorities said.

The knee joint has three parts. The joint has an inner (medial) and an outer (lateral) compartment. The kneecap (known as the patella, in which the patient was having complications), protects the front of the knee joint and joins the thigh bone to form a third joint, called the patellofemoral joint, doctors said.

Dr Aashish Chaudhry, director, orthopedics and joint replacement department, Aakash hospital said, "Rohtas Singh was suffering from patellofemoral arthritis due to active over use of squatting, hills climbing, stairs."

PFJ replacement or kneecap replacement is a "novel surgery" to treat advanced stage arthritis of the patellofemoral joint of the knee, the hospital authorities said.

"We replaced only the damaged part of the knee instead of the whole knee. It helped us to drastically reduce the duration of operating on the two knees; a TKR surgery takes one hour while the PFJ replacement surgery took 40 minutes. At the same time, the procedure involved minimal soft tissue dissection with quadriceps preservation, which allowed faster recovery of the patient," he said.

Also, instead of six days, as in TKR surgery, he was discharged after four days with a complete restoration of leg movement. He will undergo routine physiotherapy for two weeks and will follow rehabilitation protocols for one month. He can resume his normal life after one month, the doctor added.

"Although, conventional PFJ surgeries are technically demanding, robotics assists the surgeon as a tool for precise bone cuts and accurate implant placement. It is difficult to cut bones and align patella accurately in conventional PFJ replacement surgery," the statement said.

Robotics improves precision, aids in accurate bone cuts for final implant positioning, and increases life of the implant by 40 per cent. Till date, we have done two robotic PFJ surgeries and both have yielded excellent outcomes, Chaudhry said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)