Dr. Ian Madom, an orthopedic spine surgeon at Ortho Rhode Island, made history by performing Rhode Island’s first navigation-guided, robotic-assisted spine surgery.

Dr. Madom successfully completed a lumbar decompression and spinal fusion on January 7, 2019 at South County Hospital, with the aid of ExcelsiusGPS™, a technology that uses 3-D imaging and a robotic arm to guide surgeons in planning and performing safer, less invasive, and more accurate spine operations.

ExcelsiusGPS™ is a navigational tool that can help reduce blood loss and tissue trauma during spine surgery, allowing for faster and easier recovery. It also helps improve surgical accuracy, decreasing the likelihood of additional spine operations. South County Hospital is the first and only hospital in the state to offer this technology to benefit patient outcomes.

“The surgery went phenomenally well,” Dr. Madom said of the historic procedure. Designed to alleviate nerve compression and stabilize the spine, the operation was performed to relieve pain so severe the patient had difficulty walking more than 50 feet without rest. “This surgery allows them to get up and walk and move more freely… so that they can be out in the community doing the things that they want to be doing,” Dr. Madom said.

Through their commitment to innovations like ExcelsiusGPS™, the Center for Advanced Orthopedic Surgery (CAOS), a partnership with Ortho Rhode Island and South County Hospital, is leading the way in the use of robotics to provide better outcomes for orthopedic patients. The Center for Advanced Orthopedic Surgery also offers Mako – a robotic-assisted technology that helps Ortho Rhode Island surgeons complete total and partial knee replacements and total hip replacements – in addition to robotics-assisted spine surgery with ExcelsiusGPS™.

“Over the next few years, spine surgery is really going to change,” Dr. Madom said. “[The robot] is not doing the surgery for us - it’s a GPS. It’s giving us an additional tool, a sixth sense so that we can do surgery in a safer, more efficient way.”

This new tool has Dr. Madom excited for the future of spine surgery and, most importantly, for his patients. “This is a game changer,” he said.