Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

FOR Filipino-American Dr. Jonathan Saluta, listening to his mother paid off. "Like every Filipino mom, [growing up] they want you to be a doctor or a lawyer," he told the Asian Journal. "And I kind of rebelled a little bit and said ‘Oh mom, that’s crazy. I don’t want to do that.’ But at the end of my college career, I gave it a shot. And mom was right."

"I wanted to be a doctor. I liked medicine. I like helping people. I like the science behind it. So eventually I became a doctor," he added.

Now, the 39-year-old Dr. Saluta is an orthopedic surgeon at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. Most recently, he became the fi rst Filipino-American doctor to use an image-guided robotic arm to treat patients with osteoarthritis, according to Good Samaritan offi cials.

The Makoplasty Partial Knee Resurfacing machine is an innovative new procedure designed to provide quicker recovery and improved surgical outcome for patients with osteoarthritis in one part of the knee. Osteoarthritis is a form of arthritis that is caused by wear-and-tear and eventual loss of the cartilage of one or more joints.

The Makoplasty is a minimally invasive procedure that features a surgeon-interactive robotic arm and visualization technology that allows the surgeon to create a plan for the surgery.

A few hospitals nationwide provide the Makoplasty machine and only a few doctors are using the procedure on patients.

"Being an orthopedic surgeon, I’m on the cutting edge of technology," said Saluta, who specializes in knee and partial knee

replacements. "Orthopedics is all about new machines and new instruments and this is state of the art right now."

The North Carolina-raised Saluta is a long way from home. His parents are originally from La Union, Philippines. He was bornin Manila Doctors Hospital. His family immigrated to North Carolina when he was three years old.

He said while growing up, there were only three Filipino families in the area.

"Now, it’s changed," he said. "There are more Filipinos living there. They have clubs and associations, but when I was growing you couldn’t see any of that in North Carolina."

Saluta, in pursuit of a medical degree, attended all the major universities in North Carolina even though friends shunned him.

He graduated from North Carolina State University before earning his medical degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.