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Q. What is robot-assisted spine surgery?

A. At UC Irvine Medical Center, we use a robotic guidance system called SpineAssist® that allows us to perform any spine surgery — from the simplest to the most complex — with greater accuracy, less radiation, less pain and faster recovery.

The SpineAssist® system is a state-of-the-art technology that allows the surgeon to develop a three-dimensional surgical blueprint for repairing spine damage and to carry out that plan with robot-assisted precision. The system includes a computerized work station that allows us to use highly sophisticated imaging of a patient’s spine and customize a surgical plan tailored to each patient’s anatomy, then plot precisely — to within one millimeter, or 1/25th of an inch — the location to make incisions and place implants. The surgeon then uses the SpineAssist guidance arm to carry out the preoperative plan.

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