For the first time in Israel – and one of the first few times anywhere in the world –surgeons at the Hadassah Medical Organization performed corrective surgery using Medtronic’s Stealth AXiS™ Surgical System, one of the newest and most advanced generation of robots. The Stealth AXiS system has been used on only a handful of occasions around the world.

Said Joshua Schroeder, MD, Director of Spine Surgery and the lead surgeon, “Our use of the Medtronic robot shows that our spine surgery center is one of the most advanced in the world and that the Hadassah Medical Organization is at the forefront of medical technology.”

The Medtronic platform unites artificial intelligence, surgical planning and highly previse navigation, allowing surgeons to reach all areas of the spine with a wider range of work and a much greater degree of accuracy than previous generations of robotic systems.

Less than a week after surgery, the first patient to benefit from Hadassah’s use of the new system was pain-free, walking with a straight back and able to return home. An 18-year-old with scoliosis so complex and severe that it had caused her shoulders to develop asymmetrically and one side of her back to become higher than the other, she had been diagnosed at 11 but had had to postpone surgery for seven years until her bones grew stronger and more stable.

To prepare for the five-hour operation, Dr. Schroeder and his team traveled to Medtronic’s training center in Switzerland, where they underwent comprehensive training using the Stealth AXiS robot in a laboratory that simulated operating room conditions.

Dr. Schroeder was assisted in the operation by Senior Spine Surgeon Sasha Satanovsky, MD; anesthesiologists Petr Mouryc, MD, and Anna Shapiro, MD; X-Ray Technician Fuad Abo Leil; and operating room nurses Mohamad Konvar and Mohammad Faroukh.