As per a study published in Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery and Research, the surgeon’s handedness exhibited an inclination towards its effect on cup positioning in manual total hip arthroplasty (THA) and robot might benefit surgeon eliminate the adverse impact.

Xiangpeng Kong and researchers assessed whether surgeon handedness could affect the cup positioning in manual THA, and whether robot could lessen the impact of surgeon handedness for the same in robot-assisted THA.

Fifty-three patients who undertook bilateral robot-assisted THA and 63 patients who undertook bilateral manual THA were respectively analyzed. A different cup positioning between bilateral THA was observed with a >5 degrees change between the bilateral anteversion and inclination. Patient demographics, positioning of acetabular cup, and Harris hip score (HHS) 3 months after the operation were noted.

Between the robotic and manual group, no notable differences were observed in case of age, gender, body mass index, diagnosis’s composition, and pre-operative and post-operative HHS. In the manual group, displacement was there in 2 left hips. Also, anteversion of left hip was considerably larger as compared to right hip in this group. No noteworthy changes of cup positioning were described amongst bilateral robot-assisted THA. As compared to the robotic group, the patients in manual group were considerably more probable to have different cup positioning between bilateral hips.

‘Future investigation is required to study the influence of handedness on the clinical outcomes,’ the study researchers concluded.