Health Matters: Little Rock woman credits robotic surgery with getting her race-ready


LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A woman credits robotic technology for a successful total knee replacement surgery, but what makes her story so special is that it has given her the chance to do what she loves again.

After two years of knee pain, Lou Peyton of Little Rock was eager to do something about it.

“I wanted to get this done. Let’s get on the road,” she explained.

Several treatment options, such as injections and medication, didn’t work, though.

“I didn’t want to live on pain pills,” Peyton said. “It was just better to me to get the problem repaired, fixed with the mako surgery.”

Baptist Health orthopedic surgeon Dr. Richard Nix told her about Mako, a robotic arm assisted technology. It creates a program plan for the patient’s total knee replacement surgery before going inside the operating room.

“The robotic arm actually makes the cuts guided by that computer program, so therein lies the precision that we want to see,” Nix explained.

Mako has proven to protect soft tissues and ligaments from damage while performing the total knee replacement.

Now at 76 years old, nothing was stopping Peyton from improving her health. She credits Mako for helping her walk without pain again, just seven months later.

“5 miles, rest 10 minutes, 5 miles, rest 10 minutes and not to look at the whole picture and just look at ‘Girl, you can do 5 miles,’” she said.

Peyton ran in the “Race for the Ages” event in Tennessee this past Labor Day, completing 106 miles in 76 hours.

“The knee’s doing well,” she said. “It did well there at the event.”

For doctors like Nix, that kind of success is what they are hoping for many patients looing to this type of procedure.

“It really is liberating to patients to regain comfort and mobility, and it’s just heartwarming to see that,” he said.

To see more details about the Mako surgical technology and how Baptist Health is using it, head to Baptist-Health.com.

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