07/22/2026
You may have heard of the “Jiffy Knee®” procedure — a brand-name term some use for a minimally invasive knee replacement technique. At OrthoNebraska, our highly experienced surgeons perform a muscle-sparing total knee replacement, which uses a similar concept of preserving muscle and reducing trauma to surrounding tissues, but with techniques refined by our team to optimize outcomes. The benefits? Often less pain, quicker recovery and a faster return to the activities you love — all delivered by specialists who perform knee replacements every day.
In this video, Dr. Sayfe Jassim, orthopedic surgeon, explains how our muscle-sparing approach works, who it’s for and what to expect during recovery. Whether you’re considering surgery or just exploring your options, you’ll learn how our expertise helps you get back on your feet with confidence.
Video transcript
Dr. Sayfe Jassim:
I’m Dr. Sayfe Jassim. I’m an orthopedic surgeon here at OrthoNebraska, and I specialize in hip and knee replacements.
How you do the knee replacement is much more important than the approach. A lot of the consistency of the good outcomes comes from how the knee replacement’s done.
The Jiffy Knee® is a knee replacement idea that basically is more regarding the approach. And so the purpose of the Jiffy Knee is to come into the knee with a muscle-sparing or quadricep-sparing approach, which is a well-known approach that’s been around for decades.
How I do the knee replacement with robotics and the idea of kinematic alignment, or resurfacing of the knee, I think is equally if not more important than the approach to the knee in terms of outcomes.
With the Jiffy Knee, there is no description of what to do after the approach. It basically just describes a muscle-sparing approach, but after that, how the knee replacement’s done, there’s really no standardization to that. So, that’s where there’s a significant difference.
In addition to that, it takes a team emphasis to get to a good outcome when it comes to a total knee replacement. So, it’s not just the surgery, it’s the perioperative care. So, basically from prior to the surgery to during the surgery and to the care after the surgery, you need a good care team to take care of that.
We have a large number of personnel for that reason.
Although the muscle sparing approach to the knee, which again there’s more than one, is a bit newer in terms of emphasis and was described decades ago, it was somewhat forgotten, or somewhat not used readily, due to the higher risk of complications related to the surgery.
So it’s extremely important to have that discussion with your surgeon in terms of understanding the skill level of the surgeon, the comfort with that approach, and their experience with that.
Surgeons who do this more readily, surgeons that have proper training in regards to how this is done, typically don’t have those complications happen almost ever, but there’s definitely a higher rate of those types of complications in a surgeon that’s less experienced with muscle-sparing approaches.
There’s courses across the country, some of which I actually participate in as an instructor where we teach courses to other surgeons as to how to do muscle-sparing approaches. And I think that’s key.
Um, also understanding patient selection.
What I would tell the patient is to look at more things than a name and look at outcomes. Regardless if it’s muscle-sparing or muscle-splitting, robotic or non-robotic, it’s important to go where the outcomes are best.
And I think when you look at those numbers from OrthoNebraska, outcomes are at the top. And there’s a reason for that.
