"OrthoMIT--minimal invasive orthopaedic therapy" is a project to develop an integrated platform for less invasive operative procedures in hip, knee and spine surgery, supported by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). Twenty-seven industrial and clinical partners under the management of the Orthopaedic Department of the University Hospital Aachen (Prof. Dr. F. U. Niethard) intend to develop in 10 subprojects innovative aspects and modules of the "OrthoMIT" system.
Within the project and amongst other procedures, joint-preserving correction osteotomies have been analysed to develop planning and navigation tools on the basis of improved and less invasive surgery. Therefore, the reproducibility and validity of the conventional methods were investigated and compared with the technical possibilities in computer-guided planning and navigated surgery for correction osteotomies of the upper extremities. Clinical needs, necessary innovative aspects and modules were defined out of these consolidated findings and passed on to the industrial partners of the "OrthoMIT" project to develop innovative techniques in the field of planning and navigation.
The present article reports in a concise way about the essentials of the available current techniques in correction osteotomies of the upper extremities with the main focus being placed on navigation.