Our hips, knees, shoulders, and elbows are crucial for mobility and maintaining an active lifestyle as we age. These large joints are incredibly complex structures that naturally experience wear and tear over a lifetime. As a result, long standing joint or musculoskeletal pain is very common in adults.
Fortunately, the orthopedic surgery experts at Mayo Clinic are world leaders in repairing and replacing these complex joints—harnessing new technologies like robotic-assisted surgeries, cartilage regeneration, and artificial intelligence to improve patient outcomes.
Robotic-Assisted Joint Replacement Surgery
One of the most exciting advancements in orthopedic surgery is robotic-assisted surgery, which ensures implants are placed with the utmost precision—accurate within one degree and one millimeter. This is important because if components aren’t placed correctly, patients can suffer complications, or the implant may not last as long as it should.
Mayo Clinic performed the first robotic-assisted shoulder surgery in the world, and its orthopedic surgeons use robotic systems in many knee and hip procedures, as well. Mayo’s experienced surgeons are always in full control of every robotic-assisted surgery, guiding the robotic arm to carry out the procedure safely and precisely.
Dr. Joaquin Sanchez-Sotelo, an orthopedic surgeon at Mayo Clinic, believes robotic-assisted procedures are the future. “Once we determine where to place a component, the robot guarantees it lands in exactly that position,” he says. “This translates into more efficient surgeries, improved patient satisfaction, and lower rates of long-term implant failure.”
Regenerating Your Own Cartilage
Mayo Clinic also leads in joint preservation and restoration to help people avoid joint replacement surgery. One promising therapy currently in clinical trials is known as recycled cartilage auto/allo implantation, or RECLAIM.
Invented by Mayo Clinic orthopedic surgeon Dr. Daniel Saris, RECLAIM is the nation’s first one-step cartilage-restoration procedure. The minimally invasive procedure injects a combination of the patient’s own cartilage cells and donor stem cells into the damaged joint, enabling tissue growth and restoring cartilage within approximately one year.
Dr. Saris says the procedure is currently being used on knees and hips, and his team is working on lab studies to make it available for other joints, too. “Every innovation at Mayo Clinic is validated through rigorous testing, so patients can feel confident that even our most novel treatments are safe,” he explains.
Accelerating Innovation with AI
Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Cody Wyles says artificial intelligence at Mayo Clinic isn’t about replacing human expertise—it’s about amplifying it.
Dr. Wyles and his team are using AI to support surgical planning, optimize implant selection, and anticipate complications before they occur. Machine learning models are trained on high-quality data from Mayo’s own registry of close to 200,000 joint replacement surgeries, dating back to the first FDA-approved hip replacement surgery in the United States in 1969.
“We’re creating a seamless feedback loop between research and patient care—where insights generated in the operating room continually refine the algorithms that guide the next procedure,” says Dr. Wyles.
Talk to the Experts
Mayo Clinic is constantly innovating to make orthopedic surgeries safer and more effective. If joint pain is holding you back, let the experts in Rochester relieve it.
To learn more or request an appointment, visit careinfo.mayoclinic.org/orthopedicsurgery or call 507-780-6674.
