Vasili Karas, M.D. Joins ExplORer Surgical Advisory Board

Vasili Karas, M.D., M.S., an orthopedic surgeon at Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush, has joined the Clinical Advisory Board of Chicago, Illinois-based ExplORer Surgical, an entity providing a platform for intraoperative surgical and interventional procedure workflow management and analytics. Dr. Karas will bring his wealth of experience in rapid recovery orthopedic surgery and will thus help bridge the gap between the company’s platform and its users.

Dr. Karas earned his medical degree at Rush University’s Medical College in Chicago, followed by a residency at Duke University Medical Center. Afterwards, he returned to Rush to undertake a fellowship in hip and knee replacement surgery. Dr. Karas has over 40 peer-reviewed publications and is a committee member of the American Academy of Hip and Knee Surgeons.

“Dr. Karas first became familiar with ExplORer’s workflow platform when he implemented the technology at Rush to assist with total knee and total hip procedures, evaluating its effectiveness after each procedure,” stated the company news release. “Over the course of eight months, Dr. Karas and his team improved confidence in their procedures and reduced challenges stemming from unexpected procedural occurrences, surgeon preferences for instrumentation and room setup, and patient positioning, giving the technology a 9.1/10 score. The team also noted a 30 percent increase in comfort supporting Dr. Karas, and Dr. Karas noted an 80 percent decrease in instrumentation and room setup challenges. As a result of its effectiveness, ExplORer’s technology is now a fully adapted technology within Dr. Karas’ practice.”

Emphasizing the streamlining effect of ExplORer, Dr. Karas told OTW, “Traditionally, people would write notes if you are new to the operating room or if you’re training. In a knee replacement, we can have 150 steps—now, with ExplORer, it’s upgrading the way we do that. We can give the instructions over an app, that we have developed ahead of time, that has all of those steps. It beats the learning curve, in particular when we are doing robotic technology, which is brand new to several people. It’s more than changing from one implant vendor to another—it’s a true paradigm shift in the operating room. Having a learning tool like ExplORer to bring all the various steps and instruments in one place is huge.”