Middlesex Health in Middletown, Conn. is expanding. They recently added a new, state-of-the-art orthopedic operating suite with robotic technology for spine and knee surgeries.

“So where we’re standing is a room made specifically for primarily joint replacement procedures and spine procedures, but we can do technically any kind of orthopedic case in here,” explained Terry Reardon, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon at Middlesex Health.

“This new room is about a year in the making,” added Alfred Hicks, D.O., an orthopedic and spine surgeon at Middlesex Health.

Inside the 600-square-foot operating room, surgeons are able to perform cutting edge, minimally invasive procedures using two new devices: The Navio for full and partial knee replacements and the Excelsius GPS for spinal procedures.

“The Excelcius GPS robot is mostly going to be used for lumbar procedures, so people who have back pain and leg pain, once they’ve tried everything else and they know that those things haven’t worked for them,” Dr. Hicks explained.

Like the GPS we use to navigate streets, the Excelcius GPS helps surgeons navigate a patient’s spine.

“It integrates the pre-operative cat scan with intraoperative scanning and then it knows exactly where those bones in space are so it can maneuver the arm that it has and then allows us to position the instruments exactly where we want them to be.,” Dr. Hicks said.

Similarly, the Navio also creates a map of the knee using a handheld tool.

“The computer generates positioning from these probes and these little points on this machine right here and you can put the point on the end of the bone and just mark the bone just like this,” Dr. Reardon demonstrated. “That makes you a 3D picture of what the prosthesis looks like and where it would go.”

These two new technologies offer big benefits to patients at Middlesex Health, like smaller incisions and reduced blood loss.

“We’re hoping that over time it shows we’re able to do these procedures much quicker and with a much faster recovery,” Dr. Reardon said.

Middlesex Health’s team of orthopedic surgeons actually had a hand in designing the suite to ensure it meets the needs of patients. To learn more, visit MiddlesexHealth.org.