People fall apart.  It used to be the case that when someone started to age and the aches and pains set in, we threw 'em a cane and tried to find some charm in their pain-induced grumpiness.

Then came full-on joint replacement surgeries.  Pretty rad, and on the whole, a vast improvement over a life of increased suffering, but still not ideal.

MAKO is the now.  They offer RIO -- a robotic resurfacing system that might just revolutionize things for the weak-in-the-knees-not-because-they're-teenagers-fawning-over-Justin-Bieber-but-because-their-knees-are-actually-weak crowd.

RIO is used to perform "MAKOplasties" -- a much less invasive form of joint surgery that reduces the time a patient is out of commission from months to just a few weeks.  Presently, there are many who don't realize that this is an option, so they opt not to undergo any procedure.  Given time, this technology may pull scores of sufferers off of the sideline, figuratively and literally.