KITV's Aging Well: robotic-assisted surgery helps people recover faster from knee replacement

Aging Well is KITV4 Island News' ongoing series on staying active, healthy, and independent with age — which made Dr. Morton's practice a natural subject. The feature, "Aging Well: Robotic-assisted surgery helps people recover faster from knee operation," aired March 2021 and highlighted how robotic technology was changing knee replacement for Hawai‘i patients: surgery planned in 3D, executed with machine precision, and followed by a recovery measured in hours and days rather than weeks in a hospital bed.

The original story ran on kitv.com, and the full segment is below. It's one of several Hawai‘i TV features on the practice — the rest live on the videos & media page.

The phrase conjures a machine operating on its own. The reality, as Dr. Morton explains it, is the opposite: the robot is a precision instrument, not a decision-maker. Before surgery, your knee is mapped into a personalized 3D plan — implant size, position, alignment, and how your ligaments balance. During surgery, the robotic platform executes that plan with sub-millimeter accuracy, tracking your bone in real time and verifying every step before the next one happens. Dr. Morton performs every part of the operation; the robot makes sure the surgery he planned is exactly the surgery you get.

Humans are good at judgment; robots are good at millimeters. Modern knee replacement uses both — you can see exactly how on the ROSA and Mako pages.

The segment's headline claim — faster recovery — has a mechanical explanation, not a marketing one:

• Less collateral trauma. Robotic guidance keeps cuts exactly where the plan says, so ligaments, tendons, and healthy tissue outside the plan are spared. Less inadvertent soft-tissue injury means less early pain and swelling — the two things that slow patients down most in the first weeks.
• Fewer alignment outliers. Published studies consistently associate robotic assistance with implant positioning closer to plan. A knee balanced in millimeters feels more natural sooner — and starts its decades of service in the right position.
• Confidence to move early. A precisely placed, well-balanced knee is one a physical therapist can safely load the same afternoon — and early walking pumps out swelling, prevents clots, and tells your nervous system the joint is safe to use.

Robotics is one lever among several. Dr. Morton pairs it with the quad-sparing subvastus approach, tourniquet-less technique, and opioid-sparing anesthesia — the full rapid recovery protocol that has most patients walking within hours and qualified candidates home the same day.

The series' theme is Dr. Morton's, too. A knee replacement isn't the goal — it's the means to hiking Koko Head again, playing with grandkids on the beach, and staying independent in your own home. Knee arthritis tends to shrink a life gradually, activity by activity; the case for treating it well is getting those activities back. What recovery actually looks like, week by week, is laid out in the knee replacement recovery guide, and the long-term payoff in returning to sports after a total knee.

The robotic practice KITV featured in 2021 kept building:

Dr. Morton operates at The Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu, Adventist Health Castle on the Windward side, and Hilo Community Surgery Center — home to the Mako robot on the Big Island. Consultations are available at clinics in Honolulu (Ala Moana), West O‘ahu (Kunia), Hilo, and Kona — call (808) 439-6201 or schedule online.