PRINCETON, W.Va. – WVU Medicine Princeton Community Hospital’s (PCH) Orthopedic Center announced Wednesday that its team has completed over 2,000 robotic-assisted joint replacement procedures using the Mako system.
This robotic system provides real-time guidance during knee or hip surgery, ensuring precise implant placement and better patient outcomes. As Philip Branson, director of the Joint Center of Excellence, says, it also helps surgeons with the planning process.
“With this, you plan to precisely and you can kind of work through on the computer what the options are to set things up, and then when you come into the operating room, you have two or three options that you know are good options and the robot helps you select which of those will come out the best, and here’s the other great part,” said Branson. “At the end of the procedure, we can test the need to verify that the alignment is correct and that the balance of the knee is correct, which is something that with manual surgery is just not possible.”
For orthopedic surgeon Fred Morgan, the robotic system has transformed the way he performs surgeries.
He says, “We’re able to real time look at the images on both the computer and look at the actual patient, superimpose the cuts and the technology that we’ve utilized and we’re able to make those cuts in a precise way.”
For patients with chronic knee or hip pain, robotic-assisted surgery at PCH offers life-changing benefits, including smaller incisions, less blood loss, reduced pain, and faster recovery times—allowing them to return to daily life sooner.
Branson says, “We migrated from, usually people being in the hospital three to four days to now, where some people who are healthy, go home the same day and most people go home the next day after surgery. I think that the whole recovery time is much faster. Pain is much better controlled than it has been in the past and robotic technology, as one part of that, but it takes the whole system to be able to achieve that.”
PCH was the first hospital in West Virginia to acquire two Mako robotic systems.
In 2024, surgeons performed 707 Mako procedures at PCH, averaging nearly three robotic surgeries per weekday throughout the year.
PCH ranks 7th in the number of robotic-assisted procedures out of 73 hospitals in its territory, which includes of major healthcare centers in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Erie, Columbus, and Youngstown.
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