Dr. Michael Leonard has been a pioneer in bringing robotic spine surgery to the San Antonio area, opening the first robotic spine surgery center in South Texas in 2012.
Robotic Spine Surgery is More Precise
Traditionally, spinal hardware placement was done by the surgeon using just his or her naked eye. After anatomical landmarks were identified, the surgeon would simply estimate the optimal site for hardware placement. This can lead to poorly placed instrumentation that does not adequately stabilize the spine, or, worse yet, inadvertent injury to nerve roots.
The Mazor Robotics Renaissance™ spine surgery system provides increased patient safety and surgical precision by assisting the surgeon with placement of the spinal hardware. It achieves this by using the patient’s pre-operative imaging to plan out the patients surgery even prior to going into the operating room. Once in surgery, the robotic system is registered to the patient and the system then guides the surgeon in precisely placing the spinal hardware. The advantages of robotic spine surgery are decreased neurological risk, increased surgical accuracy, reduced trauma to the tissue, less exposure to harmful radiation, less blood loss, and a faster recovery. All of this is possible with robotic spine surgery.