Sep 4, 2026 · 29 min · 12 segments
Robotic-assisted shoulder replacement is one of the newest technologies in orthopedic surgery—but what does the robot actually do? Dr. Caleb Davis and Dr. Justin Givens take you inside the operating…
Justin GivensHostCaleb DavisHost
Yeah, so robotic assisted shoulder replacement is actually where we use a robot to help us guide where your implants are going to go.
So this is very different than some of the things that people think about in general surgery, which is where a lot of the robots have been before anywhere else.
So in general surgery, the doc kind of goes away from the patient and normally sits like in a pod and does all this work separately.
away yeah we're talking like 20 feet away from the patient right so in orthopedics this is not quite the case so in orthopedics a lot of the robotics here is actually where you're putting the robot is kind of putting boundaries on where you can go and so the accuracy of the robot determines how accurate those boundaries are so a lot of this starts with pre-op planning and things like that we get ct scans and as i tell people we make a reconstruction of your bone and then we practice the shoulder replacement virtually we try to see what's going to work best for you what implant sizes what shapes what positions are going to give you the best functional outcome and then we use the robot to recreate it So for example, in the shoulder, the robot that we use, when I squeeze a trigger, it allows me to go.
And if I get more than 0.1 millimeters too deep, or if I'm off more than 0.1 degrees, it shuts off.
And it will not let me to prepare your bone in a way that is not going to be exactly what we planned.
Now, like I said, there's some variable, right? It's 0.1 degrees here and there and 0.1 millimeters.
And, you know, the biggest thing is that is so small that that's not something I could see.
So, well, and the paper to prove this, this is very new, right? And so this literally just started in 2025.
was going to say, when did you first start doing robotic shoulder replacements? Tell us a little bit about when this kind of got going.
Yeah, so I was one of the first five people in the country to start getting to use robotic replacement.
Yeah, so robotic assisted shoulder replacement is actually where we use a robot to help us guide where your implants are going to go.
So this is very different than some of the things that people think about in general surgery, which is where a lot of the robots have been before anywhere else.
So in general surgery, the doc kind of goes away from the patient and normally sits like in a pod and does all this work separately.
away yeah we're talking like 20 feet away from the patient right so in orthopedics this is not quite the case so in orthopedics a lot of the robotics here is actually where you're putting the robot is kind of putting boundaries on where you can go and so the accuracy of the robot determines how accurate those boundaries are so a lot of this starts with pre-op planning and things like that we get ct scans and as i tell people we make a reconstruction of your bone and then we practice the shoulder replacement virtually we try to see what's going to work best for you what implant sizes what shapes what positions are going to give you the best functional outcome and then we use the robot to recreate it So for example, in the shoulder, the robot that we use, when I squeeze a trigger, it allows me to go.
And if I get more than 0.1 millimeters too deep, or if I'm off more than 0.1 degrees, it shuts off.
And it will not let me to prepare your bone in a way that is not going to be exactly what we planned.
Now, like I said, there's some variable, right? It's 0.1 degrees here and there and 0.1 millimeters.
And, you know, the biggest thing is that is so small that that's not something I could see.
So, well, and the paper to prove this, this is very new, right? And so this literally just started in 2025.
was going to say, when did you first start doing robotic shoulder replacements? Tell us a little bit about when this kind of got going.
Yeah, so I was one of the first five people in the country to start getting to use robotic replacement.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
