Dr. Robert A. Kaufmann
Dr. Kaufmann was born, as an American, in Berlin, West Germany to parents who were teachers. He attended seven different schools in Germany and Austria, including two all german-speaking boarding schools, and then graduated from the Munich American High School. He attended the University of Pittsburgh School of Mechanical Engineering where every summer he worked in mechanical engineering at Hall Industries Inc. Upon graduation in 1991, he continued as a design engineer, while concurrently completing medical school prerequisites and master’s level biomechanical engineering courses at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon. It is in 1991 that the assigned topic was to evaluate the biomechanics of a joint replacement and Dr Kaufmann chose total elbow replacements. He studied the constrained and unconstrained designs as well as the semi constrained implants, many of which are still available today.
Dr. Kaufmann gained acceptance to the Temple University School of Medicine. Between his first and second years, he returned to Pittsburgh to work on a medical robotics project at Carnegie Mellon, for which he was awarded the Harold Lampert Temple Medical School Student Research Award. |
As a medical student he performed biomechanics research under the mentorship of Scott H Kozin, MD. In 1997, Dr. Kaufmann completed his medical school education and was recruited by his home institution to continue surgical training. He completed his orthopaedic surgery residency at Temple University Hospital under the leadership of Joseph J Thoder, MD in 2002. His research experiences as a medical student and as a resident reinforced the decision to specialize in hand surgery. In 2003, Dr. Kaufmann was accepted as a hand and upper extremity fellow at the Philadelphia Hand Center. Upon completing this fellowship, Dr. Kaufmann was recruited by Freddie H. Fu, MD to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Department of Orthopaedic Surgery where he began his career as an Assistant Professor.
As a committed educator, he has daily orthopedic residency teaching responsibilities for second year orthopedic residents that are rotating on his service. He teaches both in clinic and in the OR and emphasizes an understanding of common problems while encouraging residents to think broadly and critically. For his educational efforts, Dr. Kaufmann received the Golden Apple Teaching Award in both 2008 and 2017. In addition to teaching residents, he also instructs hand surgery fellows that are rotating on his service. A busy practice provides the volume of complicated pathology that is required to teach advanced management of upper extremity surgical treatment.
Dr. Kaufmann has been active in biomechanical engineering research. His interests have focused on modeling the biomechanics of the wrist as well as investigating the consequences of nerve injury on hand motor control and coordination. He investigated the effect of releasing the intrinsic muscle’s influence on the PIP joint and has examined the impact of CMC thumb arthritis on its circumduction motion and kinematics. His clinical research accomplishments include distal radius fracture management in the elderly as well as characterization of finger joint osteoarthritis. He is collaborating with the Orthopaedic Robotics Laboratory under the direction of Richard Debski, PhD where he is assisting with an experimental setup that creates active motion at different levels of shoulder abduction. His research has been published in major hand and upper extremity journals.
As a committed educator, he has daily orthopedic residency teaching responsibilities for second year orthopedic residents that are rotating on his service. He teaches both in clinic and in the OR and emphasizes an understanding of common problems while encouraging residents to think broadly and critically. For his educational efforts, Dr. Kaufmann received the Golden Apple Teaching Award in both 2008 and 2017. In addition to teaching residents, he also instructs hand surgery fellows that are rotating on his service. A busy practice provides the volume of complicated pathology that is required to teach advanced management of upper extremity surgical treatment.
Dr. Kaufmann has been active in biomechanical engineering research. His interests have focused on modeling the biomechanics of the wrist as well as investigating the consequences of nerve injury on hand motor control and coordination. He investigated the effect of releasing the intrinsic muscle’s influence on the PIP joint and has examined the impact of CMC thumb arthritis on its circumduction motion and kinematics. His clinical research accomplishments include distal radius fracture management in the elderly as well as characterization of finger joint osteoarthritis. He is collaborating with the Orthopaedic Robotics Laboratory under the direction of Richard Debski, PhD where he is assisting with an experimental setup that creates active motion at different levels of shoulder abduction. His research has been published in major hand and upper extremity journals.
His ability to speak German fluently inspired Dr. Kaufmann to explore unique opportunities to collaborate with surgeons abroad. He contacted Professor Joachim Windolf MD, the chairman at the Heinrich Heine Universität in Düsseldorf who, in 2011, sent Dr. Sebastian V Gehrmann to Pittsburgh for more than 1 year to attend clinic, OR and perform research with three investigators. One year later another German orthopaedist, Prof. Dr. med. Tim Tobias Lögters came to Pittsburgh and experienced a similar immersion into the life of an American attending. The third fellow from Germany was Dr.med. Johannes Schneppendahl. As his year in Pittsburgh was concluding, Johannes was still eager to start a new project and he collaborated with Dr. Kaufmann during the early brainstorming stages of this novel elbow replacement. He remains a contributor today. In 2013, Dr. Kaufmann was recognized as an honored guest and the Keynote Speaker for the 2013 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Unfallchirurgie (DGU) conference in Düsseldorf and five years later was awarded Honorary Membership in Berlin. |
The genesis of this uncemented and non mechanically linked total elbow replacement stems from a clinic interaction that Dr. Kaufmann had with a young patient who sustained an elbow fracture dislocation that was irreducible. The elbow remained perched for one year and was immobile due to the formation of substantial heterotopic ossification. Dr Kaufmann recommended either living with this painful joint or having the elbow fused as his experience with elbow replacements had been primarily in the realm of salvaging ones that had been previously placed and were now loose or infected or the surrounding bones had broken. He did not feel that an arthroplasty either hemi or total would provide durable pain relief in this young patient. After an extensive conversation, the patient left disappointed and this discussion represents the nidus for a journey to find a new arthroplasty method. Preliminary intramedullary fixation thoughts coupled with this patient and the eagerness of Dr. Schneppendahl to "have a project" led to a exhaustive patent search and a thorough review of the history of total elbow arthroplasty.
The original sketches of the uncemented fixation from 2012 demonstrate a mechanically linked sloppy hinge. Half a year later, on a surgical day when Dr. Kaufmann was to perform a medial collateral "Tommy John" ligament reconstruction, the idea of mandating a ligament reconstruction was born. Once the intramedullary fixation and the ligament reconstruction concepts were combined, the viability of this concept prompted multiple pencil drawings and subsequent computer aided blueprints.
With blueprints for a prototype in hand, Dr Kaufmann contacted Brian Knopp, BSME, who assisted him with engineering services as well as the conversion of the original drawings to SolidWorks (Dassault Systèmes, Vélizy-Villacoublay, France), which is a solid modeling computer-aided design and computer-aided engineering program. All design modifications have been made using this platform. Brian has assisted in the finite element analysis, load calculations and three dimensional modeling. |
Devon Moody is a valued contributor to this novel elbow arthroplasty. He is a mechanical designer and draftsman by trade and has assisted in the creation of all three implant sizes. as well as prototypes and test fixtures. He has a skilled eye in identifying areas that may benefit from improvement ranging from material selection to machined component tolerancing. He has assisted Dr Kaufmann during cadaver implantation efforts and has contributed to different methods of implantation. |