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Dr. Philip Huang stands with the VELYS Robotic-Assisted Solution, which is attached to the bed in front.

Dr. Philip Huang stands with the VELYS Robotic-Assisted Solution, which is attached to the bed in front.

Community Howard Regional Health Dr. Philip Huang has done thousands of knee surgeries over his 10-year career using the same methods that were first developed in the 1980s.

That includes drilling a hole into the femur and inserting a metal rod. Simple measuring tools are used to determine where to make incisions and cuts.

“We’ve been using almost caveman-like instrumentation since the beginning of time as far as knee replacements go,” Huang said.

But that all changed last week when Huang completed his first knee surgery using a first-of-its-kind robot called the VELYS Robotic-Assisted Solution.

The robot, which is made by the Johnson & Johnson-owned company DePuy Synthes, is the newest technology available for knee surgeries. The machine has been on the market for about a year, and there are only 70 being used nationwide. Community Howard is the first hospital in Indiana to have one.

Now, the robot-assisted surgery does away with the need for a metal rod in the femur and allows Huang to use infrared cameras and optical trackers to make highly accurate incisions and cuts.

The robot also uses sensors to make an exact digital copy of a patient’s knee, which allows Huang to better plan each surgery and track information in the joint.

“It’s the latest and, in my opinion, greatest robot out there,” Huang said. “This is lightyears ahead of what we were using.”

Robot-assisted knee surgeries have been around for about a decade, but other machines use a mechanical arm and take up a large amount of space in the surgery room. Many require a CT scan before the operations.

The VELYS robot is small and attaches right to the operating bed and helps ensure every cut and incision is highly accurate. The digital imaging it uses means no CT scan is required.

Huang said he expects the precision of the VELYS to lead to faster recovery times, enhancing significant strides already made in recovery time thanks to improved techniques in pain management.

In fact, for some patients, the procedure is now an outpatient surgery. Huang performed the hospital’s first outpatient knee replacement earlier this year, allowing the patient to return home just hours after the surgery .

Ten years ago, all those patients would have spent at least three days in the hospital and likely experienced a lot of pain.

Huang said the VELYS is just the latest example of new technology changing the face of how medicine and health care operate, but he anticipates even bigger changes coming down the pipe.

“Robotics will revolutionize joint-replacement surgery, without a doubt,” he said. “It’s a matter of when and how much data we can collect and what we do with that.”

But for now, the advancement the VELYS robot has brought to knee surgeries at Community Howard is leaps and bounds beyond anything they — or any other hospital in the region — had before, Huang said.

“This has completely revolutionized all of that,” he said.

Carson Gerber can be reached at 765-854-6739, carson.gerber@kokomotribune.com or on Twitter @carsongerber1.

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