Adam’s Heart Valve Surgery Blog

Blog Topics: Robotic Heart Valve Repair; Patient Success Story; Benefits; Advantages; Mitral Valve Repair; Minimally Invasive Heart Surgery; Heart Valve Surgery Video

The future of heart valve surgery using smaller incisions appears to be bright. In addition to newer, catheter-based methods for heart valve replacement, robots are also being used for minimally invasive procedures to repair heart valves.

As I wrote last week, minimally invasive heart valve procedures are providing encouraging patient results due to smaller incisions and faster recovery.

Here is a patient story that touches on robotic heart valve surgery for a mitral valve repair.

ROBOTIC HEART SURGERY SUCCESS STORY

It’s a machine that looks like a high tech video game but in reality this $1.5 million robot is a new alternative to open heart surgery.

A Turtle Lake, Wis. man was the first person in Minnesota to undergo the procedure to repair a heart valve.

The surgery is minimally invasive and performed by the robot that is guided by a surgeon. Six days after surgery 60-year-old Clay Barritt is already sitting up and moving around his hospital room at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minn.

“My recovery has been so easy,” he said.

Open heart surgery by contrast requires the chest to be cut open and the patient is sidelined for weeks. The largest of Barritt’s incision is just one inch long.

The actual surgery was performed by robotic arms which do the stitching inside the heart. The robot is hardly on its own with the surgeon sitting about eight feet away. Staring into a console his hands guiding the arms every move.

One of the many advantages that this technique has over traditional surgery is that this camera can go inside the heart giving the surgeon a perspective he never would get in traditional open heart surgery.

“Its a little bit daunting because I am not at the patients side,” said Dr. Goya Raikar, who operated on Barritt.

Raikar said the results are far superior to traditional surgery because he can see the heart better and the robots movements are smoother.

“The robot will transmit our tiny moves very effectively without tremor so the dexterity you get with the robot is phenomenal,” said Raikar.

For the patient, the robot delivers a chance to get back to normal weeks earlier.

“In this surgery I can move myself, I can move left and right its easy to get up and down,” said Barritt.

This type of robotic procedure is commonly used in prostate surgery but Regions Hospital is the only hospital in Minnesota, and one of only a handful in the entire country, currently offering this procedure for heart surgeries.

If you would like to see a video of Dr. Vaughn Starnes perform a minimally invasive heart valve repair using a Da Vinci robotic system, please click here.

Keep on tickin,

Adam

Adam Pick is the author of The Patient’s Guide To Heart Valve Surgery, a unique book which integrates the clinical facts of heart valve surgery with the personal experiences of an actual heart valve surgery patient. This special book was designed to minimize stress and enhance the patient’s recovery. To learn more about Adam’s heart valve surgery book, click here.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 8:58 am and is filed under Heart Surgery Video, Heart Surgery Options. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Print This Post | EMail This Post.