New technologies, such as AI, robotics and augmented reality will significantly change the way orthopedic surgeons operate in the coming years, according to three surgeons.
All three recently connected with Becker’s to share which aspects of the orthopedic industry that they believe will be outdated by 2035.
In addition, they said current orthopedic implants will be replaced by smarter implants, AI will change the way that surgeons perform procedures, while traditional academic publishing will be replaced by open repositories within the next 10 years.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What’s an orthopedic technique or technology that will be obsolete by 2035? Why?
Pablo Castañeda, MD. Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the Baylor College of Medicine (Houston): By 2035, “freehand” orthopedic surgery will be a relic of the past. The convergence of robotics, navigation and augmented reality is transforming the operating room into a precision-driven environment where variability is no longer acceptable. Robotic and computer-assisted systems already deliver reproducible alignment and component positioning in joint replacement and pedicle screw accuracy exceeding 95% in spine surgery. As costs fall and integration with pre-operative imaging becomes seamless, these tools will be as ubiquitous as power instruments are today. The surgeon’s tactile judgment and experience will remain indispensable but increasingly guided by digital precision rather than manual reference points. The next decade will see the rise of real-time intraoperative analytics, haptic feedback and adaptive robotics that learn from outcomes, making surgery safer, faster and more consistent. “Freehand” will persist only in very low-resource settings, while the standard of care shifts to image-guided, data-verified execution.
Equally profound will be the demise of traditional academic publishing. The next generation of surgeons expects education that is online, interactive and freely accessible. The paywalled, print-based model that dominated for a century is collapsing under financial and cultural pressure. Knowledge dissemination is moving toward open repositories, preprint servers and transparent peer review, supplemented by immersive, video-based learning. Scientific authority will depend less on impact factor and more on credibility, curation and community validation. The winners in this new ecosystem will be those who uphold rigor while embracing speed, openness and global access, the principles that define modern scientific communication.
Derrick Lousaing, MD. Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at Fracture and Orthopaedic Clinic (Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago): I think that salvage procedures for major traumatic injuries, as well as malignant tumors below the knee joint will be replaced by “cyborg” prosthesis as a primary procedure and therefore become obsolete. Upper limb prosthetics will lag marginally behind.
The advancement in osseous integration technology and tactile and pressure-based prosthetics because of AI, robotics and new materials will provide outcomes that will be superior with rapid recovery and better overall function.
Thomas Myers, MD. Associate Professor at the Department of Orthopaedics of the University of Rochester (N.Y.): By 2035, AI will continue to have a significant impact across the three areas of education, research and clinical care. AI progress and adoption will make our current processes in these three areas obsolete and will in many instances break down current barriers in these three domains. AI’s ability to capture, process and analyze information will allow a more efficient and integrated approach to education, research and clinical care. These three tasks will more frequently be occurring simultaneously with the help of AI. For example, by 2035, we will be closer to being able to know prior to a clinical encounter how a new orthopedic student practitioner best interprets information and how a potential patient best interprets information, adjusting the presentation of information in real time for the student and the patient. We will also be able to better evaluate performance (clinical or surgical skill or patient comprehension), providing objective metric-based feedback to a student following the encounter, while at the same time collecting all the data that could be used in researching these encounters to improve education, performance and outcomes.
By 2035, most orthopedic practitioners and patients will have always had AI and will have more information at their fingertips, making our current type of patient visits obsolete. There will be far more shared decision making as both parties will be more sophisticated through AI. Hopefully our current EMR interactions will become completely automated with the help of AI – allowing more patient facing time. Also, current orthopedic implants are likely to become obsolete; they will become “smarter” with the ability to monitor for infection or failure.
