{"id":7298,"date":"2011-11-22T13:54:47","date_gmt":"2011-11-22T18:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/?p=7298"},"modified":"2019-02-26T20:07:36","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T01:07:36","slug":"candidate-robotic-mitral-repair-harold-roberts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2011\/11\/22\/candidate-robotic-mitral-repair-harold-roberts\/","title":{"rendered":"Heart Valve Summit Video #7: &#8220;Are All Patients Candidates For Robotic Mitral Valve Repair?&#8221; Asks Evan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few days before the Heart Valve Summit, Evan sent me a great question that reads, &#8220;Adam &#8211; Specific to mitral valve repair with a robot&#8230; Are all patients candidates for this surgical technique?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To provide Evan an expert opinion, I discussed this topic with Dr. Harold Roberts, MD, an experienced heart valve surgeon from WVU Medicine in West Virginia. Here are the highlights from our discussion. (A transcript of this interview is provided below for those patients and caregivers in our community who are hearing impaired.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/q0hkSDIwOw8\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Evan for his great question and a special thanks to Dr. Harold Roberts for sharing his clinical expertise with our community. To learn more about Dr. Roberts and his practice, please <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Harold-Roberts-Morgantown-West%20Virginia.php\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n<p>P.S. Here is the video transcript of my discussion with Dr. Roberts:<\/p>\n<p>Adam: \u201cHi everybody, it\u2019s Adam and we are at the Heart Valve Summit.\u00a0 We\u2019re answering your questions that were posted at HeartValveBlog.com.\u00a0 Thrilled to be joined today by Dr. Harold Roberts who practices at WVU Medicine in West Virginia.\u00a0 The question for Dr. Roberts comes in from Evan, and Evan writes: Adam, Specific to mitral valve repair with a robot.\u00a0 Are all patients candidates for this surgical technique?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Harold Roberts: \u201cWell, I think I can say categorically that, no, not all patients are candidates for this type of procedure.\u00a0 However, a large proportion are.\u00a0 But in order to determine if it is indeed in the patient\u2019s best interest to be done through a robotic endoscopic approach, a number of tests have to be carried out.\u00a0 This would include things like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2011\/03\/27\/cardiac-catheterization-heart-valve-diagnosis\/\">cardiac catheterization<\/a>.\u00a0 Patients have, let\u2019s say, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/leaking-heart-valve-symptoms.php\">severely leaky mitral valve<\/a> that needs to fixed; but it turns out that they also have several blockages in their coronary arteries. \u00a0Well I don\u2019t think this approach is appropriate, because then those patients would probably be best served by a traditional sternotomy with multiple bypasses and a mitral valve repair at that time.\u00a0 However, if they don\u2019t have significant coronary disease, their left ventricle is fairly strong; you would not want to, because of the additional time required on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2017\/09\/12\/heart-lung-machine-facts\/\">heart lung machine<\/a>. \u00a0You don\u2019t want to use this approach for patients that have really weak ventricles.\u00a0 Those types of patients are best served by short and sweet, quick operations.\u00a0 However, it is quite a safe way to go for patients who need <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/mitral-valve-repair-surgery.php\">complex mitral valve repairs<\/a>. \u00a0Most patients that have leaky mitral valves, valves can be reliably and securely fixed, reconstructed by this technique.\u00a0 But you would need, number one, to make sure that they do not have significant coronary artery disease. \u00a0Also don\u2019t want to do patients, through this approach, through the right side approach; either the mini-thoracotomy or robotic endoscopic approach, if they have severely damaged lungs.\u00a0 The reason being, when you go through the right chest it can transiently make the right lung a little sick for a temporary time, maybe a day or two.\u00a0 And if they have marginal lung capacity that type of patient may not tolerate this type of approach.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Adam: &#8220;Great, well Evan I hope that helped you.\u00a0 I know it helped me learn a whole lot more.\u00a0 Dr. Roberts, I know you\u2019ve been practicing now for quite some time in Florida.\u00a0 About how long have you been practicing?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Roberts: \u201cI\u2019ve been here since 1990.\u00a0 And I actually started doing mitral repair after spending a week with Alain Carpentier in Paris back in 1992.\u00a0 So I\u2019m going on twenty years of doing this and as you can see by my attendance at this valve summit, it is a passion of mine and I attend these types of conferences on a very regular basis.\u00a0 Probably go to at least 6 or 8 of these a year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Adam: \u201cRight.\u00a0 Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your information, your clinical work and your research with Evan and the rest of us.\u00a0 We really appreciate it and I just want to thank you again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Harold Roberts, MD: \u201cAll right.\u00a0 Thank you Adam.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mitral-valve-repair"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}