Is a robotic knee replacement worth it? If you’re facing knee replacement, you’ve probably wondered whether you should ask for the robot. In September, one of the first large, well-designed randomized trials of robotic knee replacement finally published its results, and they weren’t what the industry was hoping for. Dr. Schultz walks through the RACER-Knee trial from the UK, published in The Lancet: 339 patients, 10 hospitals, 33 surgeons, and patients who didn’t know which operation they got. The robot made cuts closer to the plan, but at one year pain, function, quality of life and complications were the same, and the robotic surgery took longer and cost more. He also covers a new study of almost 75,000 knee replacements in Ontario and explains what a robot actually does in the operating room.