07.03.2011                      01.Adar ll, 5771

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Robots back breakthrough surgery

SpineAssist – an Israeli invention – is revolutionizing delicate spinal surgery. Judy Siegel-Itzkovich spoke to the innovative company’s CEO.

Many patients scheduled for a major spinal operation naturally worry that they might find themselves in a wheelchair due to a surgical error, or simple bad luck. While this happens only rarely, it is a possibility. The results of orthopedic surgery are as good as the specialist who performs it – but today, the risk is much reduced. Not only is there computer-assisted navigation for hip replacement, for example (introduced in the past decade), but now there is a robot that guides orthopedic surgeons in performing operations customized for each patient’s anatomy. The world’s first such robotic system, called SpineAssist, is Israeli – based on the work of a scientist at Haifa’s Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and marketed around the world by Mazor Robotics (www.mazorro botics.com) of Caesarea.
Ori Hadomi, the publicly traded company’s CEO, visited Israel recently. SpineAssist is the first surgical-guidance robot for orthopedic surgery to receive full approval from the US Food and Drug Administration and the European CE. Hadomi has headed the company since 2003, and moved to New York last summer for three years to promote SpineAssist’s marketing….