Intraoperative Efficiency in Dental Implant Surgery: Power of Robotics vs. Freehand Placement

Study Design

Multi-site, prospective multi-arm clinical study which included 83 patients with 171 implants comprising 4 groups; partial implant patients with implants placed freehand (27 patients, 37 implants) and robotically (39 patients, 58 implants) and full-arch patients with implants placed freehand (3 patients, 20 implants) and robotically (14 patients, 56 implants)

Four surgeons from 3 different sites contributed data. To evaluate and compare the workflow efficiency between groups, procedural timing data was collected for all patients. For robotic cases, the patient preparation steps specific to robotic surgery include placement of the YomiLink, placement of the fiducial array, and collection of the pre-op CBCT to match the pre-op plan to the intraoperative coordinate system. The time required for each osteotomy and the time required to place each implant were measured.

Results

The average setup time for the Yomi robot was 4.7 minutes (range: 2 to 10 minutes) and was completed outside of OR time for all robotic cases. Thus, the time to set up the robotic system did not interfere with the surgeon’s or patient’s workflow and is identical for both partial and fully edentulous cases. For osteotomies in the partial implant patients, freehand preparation was 2.0 times longer than using robotics (3.9 vs 1.9 minutes), and freehand placement of implants was 1.5 times longer compared to robotic implantation (1.6 vs 1.1 minutes). For osteotomies in the full-arch patients, freehand preparation was 3.2 times longer than using robotics (4.2 vs 1.3 minutes), and freehand implantation was 4.5 times longer than robotic implantation (5.0 vs 1.1 minutes).