Patients to benefit from new surgery robot
Knee surgery patients will benefit as another surgical robot arrives at The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
The Rosa system will be used for knee surgery at Mount Vernon Hospital in Rickmansworth Road, Northwood, from September 2026.
A team of three surgeons will get to work performing total and partial knee replacement using the advanced technology from Zimmer Biomet. The plan is to perform an initial 80 surgeries, followed by a full audit to check outcomes. From March 2027, the team plans significantly more such procedures per year. The technology could be used for hip procedures too, in due course.
Using the robot is expected to reduce length of stay in hospital for many knee surgery patients, with some able to go home the same day as their procedure.
The robot is costing the Trust nothing: through collaboration with the manufacturer, provided an agreed number of surgeries per year are carried out, something Bilal Al-Obaidi, orthopaedic consultant, is confident can be achieved.
“Demand for this type of surgery is great, and up until now Hillingdon has been the only Trust in the sector without a robot like this,” he said. He will be working alongside fellow surgeons Anshul Sobti and Hinesh Bhatt, and supported by the Mount Vernon Operating Theatres Team.
This is an exciting and game-changing advance in robotic surgery for our Trust and we're looking forward to getting to work
Khai Abdul, a senior service manager at the Trust, who has been working on the agreement for more than two years, said: “This is an exciting and game-changing advance in robotic surgery for our Trust and we're looking forward to getting to work. We still have to put into place some procedures and we're making sure everyone is fully up-to-speed with the Rosa system but we're confident we will be ready to go in September.”