Patient-Matched Instrumentation 

Dr. Stefan Tarlow, an orthopedic surgeon who operates at Scottsdale Healthcare Thompson Peak Hospital, was the first Arizona surgeon to use a new minimally invasive surgery technology that uses patient-matched instrumentation. 

The Visionaire patient-matched knee technology uses a patient’s MRI and x-rays to design and build surgical instruments customized to a person’s unique knee anatomy. The instruments allow the surgeon to place the total knee implants precisely and specifically to each individual person’s knee. 

Instruments are engineered for each patient’s anatomy, which yields a precise fit. The instruments detail the bone cuts the patient will need during surgery, thus minimizing the chance for errors and improving the accuracy of the implant’s placement and alignment. Because the instruments are pre-sized and pre-aligned, time in the operating room is less which means the risk of complications such as infection may be reduced. 

The Visionaire technology allows the scanning of the patient’s MRI and x-ray images into a software program. The result is virtual images of the knee. The personal surgical instruments then are created from medical-grade plastic to match shapes and contours of the patient’s knee. These disposable and patient-specific instruments help the surgeon eliminate multiple steps and valuable minutes from knee replacement surgery. 

Hospitals benefit too. The technology helps them reduce expenses as it eliminates sterilization costs associated with traditional reusable instruments. 

The Visionaire Patient Matched technique can be combined with a minimally invasive surgical approach. Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) enables most patients to leave the hospital sooner and return to an active lifestyle sooner. MIS tissue sparing techniques helps reduce scarring, pain and recovery time. The surgeon does not make an incision in the quadriceps tendon, the large muscle on the front of the thigh, and the procedure is done through as small an incision as possible, causing less trauma to soft tissues.