Background
Hip arthroscopy is a keyhole procedure used to treat femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) and repair the labrum. Surgeons normally read the arthroscope feed, prior imaging and measurement software from several monitors positioned around the operating room, repeatedly looking away from the surgical field to do so.
The deployment
Duke Health, the academic health system of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, hosted the first surgical case performed with SportSuite Vision, a mixed reality application running on a video see-through headset. Orthopedic surgeon Chad Mather III, M.D., M.B.A. performed the hip arthroscopy. Stryker announced the case on 1 September 2026.
The application had received FDA De Novo authorization on 17 July 2026 — the first authorization granted to an application intended for intraoperative use on this headset. Its cleared indication covers the intraoperative display of arthroscopic video and medical imaging during FAI and labral repair hip arthroscopy.
What the surgeon sees
Rather than a single mirrored screen, the system places several resizable panels around the surgeon at positions he chooses:
- the live arthroscopic video feed from inside the joint
- axial, coronal and sagittal CT slices
- HipCheck, which gives real-time intraoperative feedback for measuring and resecting cam lesions to a target alpha angle
- HipMap, a 3D preoperative planning view that renders a patient-specific femur model with colour-coded resection depth and centre-edge angle analysis
Because the headset composites this content onto a live view of the real operating room, the surgeon keeps sight of the patient, the instruments and the team while the imaging stays in his line of sight and within the sterile field.
Outcome and status
The case is a first-in-human milestone rather than a routine service: one procedure, one surgeon, one site. Stryker reports the procedure was completed successfully. The stated benefits are ergonomic and workflow-related — fewer head turns to distant monitors and a surgeon-configurable information layout — rather than a published clinical outcome measure. The authorized labelling is explicit that other operating room staff continue to use conventional monitors alongside the headset.
