Scars & Pain: Minimally Invasive Heart Valve Surgery from a Women’s Perspective
Written By: Allison DeMajistre, BSN, RN, CCRN
Medical Expert: Tom Nguyen, MD, Director of Minimally Invasive Valve Surgery, Chief Medical Executive, Baptist Health South Florida, Miami, Florida
Reviewed By: Adam Pick, Patient Advocate, Author & Website Founder
Published: May 15, 2025
Women often choose minimally invasive heart valve surgery because it gives them the opportunity to get back to their normal activities faster than conventional heart valve surgery with a sternotomy.
However, many women still have concerns about scarring and pain associated with minimally-invasive surgery. Specific to this point, Catherine recently wrote to us, “I’m interested in knowing what people’s true experience is with minimally invasive surgery, especially women. I’ve been seeing comments online at HeartValveSurgery.com and at Facebook about it being pretty painful regarding recovery and issues with nerve damage. Can anyone share their experience with it?”
To answer Catherine’s questions, we were thrilled to interview Dr. Tom Nguyen, the Director of Minimally Invasive Valve Surgery at Baptist Health Miami Cardiac and Vascular Institute in Miami, Florida. Dr. Nguyen has performed over 6,000 heart valve procedures and specializes in minimally invasive techniques, making him a great candidate to answer Catherine’s question.
Facts About Women and Minimally Invasive Heart Valve Surgery
Here are the key insights shared by Dr. Nguyen:
- Scarring can be a significant concern for women. “The first thing I want to say about minimally invasive surgery is that the traditional approach for heart surgery is going through the front and that leaves a big scar there,” stated Dr. Nguyen. “Something we don’t talk about a lot is the psychological aspect of having a scar on the front of your chest. Every morning, when you wake up and take a shower, you’re reminded that you’ve had open heart surgery, and your heart needs to be fixed.”
- Concealing scars with minimally invasive surgery. “One of the advantages of minimally invasive surgery is we get to conceal all of those scars,” said Dr. Nguyen. “Related to women, I think it’s particularly important to hide those scars in their mammary folds and make them almost invisible. We purposely look at the curvature of the breast and make the incision along that curve to minimize the appearance as much as possible, making it almost negligible.”
- Pain is often related to a surgeon’s experience and how they operate. “The pain is something we sometimes hear with minimally invasive surgery, but I think a lot of it has to do with how much experience the surgeon has. It’s also related to how big the incision is and how much we spread the ribs,” explained Dr. Nguyen. “We try to make a small incision, and we don’t really spread the ribs at all. Most of our patients are up and about in a couple of days, in the hospital for three or four days, and back to normal in a couple of weeks.”
Thanks Dr. Nguyen and the Baptist Health!
On behalf of all the patients in our community, many thanks to Dr. Tom Nguyen, for everything you and your team are doing at Baptist Health Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute!
Related links:
- See Dr. Tom Nguyen’s Interactive Surgeon Profile
- Learn more at the Baptist Health South Florida Heart Valve Microsite
- Women’s Heart Health Alert: The SMART Clinical Trial
Keep on tickin,
Adam
P.S. For the deaf and hard-of-hearing members of our patient community, we have provided a written transcript of our interview with Dr. Nguyen below.
Written by Adam Pick
- Patient & Website Founder
Video Transcript:
Adam Pick: Hi everybody, it’s Adam with HeartValveSurgery.com and we’re in Los Angeles, California at the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Conference. I am thrilled to be joined by Dr. Tom Nguyen, who is the Director of Minimally Invasive Valve Surgery and Chief Medical Executive of Baptist Health Miami Cardiac and Vascular Institute in Miami, Florida. Dr. Nguyen, it is great to see you again. We’ve known each other for a long time. Thanks for being with me here at STS.
Dr. Tom Nguyen: Happy to be here.
Adam Pick: We’re getting a lot of great information here today, tomorrow, yesterday. Let’s also talk about the patients because we’re getting questions from patients all over the world and this one hits in your specialty. It’s about minimally invasive surgery from a women’s perspective. Catherine asks. “I’m interested in knowing what people’s true experience is with minimally invasive surgery, especially women. I’ve been seeing comments here at Adam’s website and in the Facebook group about it being pretty painful regarding recovery and also issues with nerve damage. Can anyone share their experience with it?”
Dr. Tom Nguyen: Adam, it’s all about the patients. I’m glad the patients are asking the question, Catherine. Thank you for asking the question. The question is the experience with minimally invasive surgery, especially with women. The first thing I want to say about minimally invasive surgery is that the traditional approach for heart surgery is going through the front and that’s a big scar there.
I think there is something that we don’t talk about a lot about. I think there’s a psychological aspect of having a scar to the front of your chest because every morning when you wake up and you take a shower, you’ve been reminded that you’ve had open heart surgery and your heart needs to be fixed.
That’s one advantage of minimally invasive surgery. And we get to conceal all those scars. Related to women, I think it’s particularly important we’re able to hide that, those scars in their mammary folds and make the scars almost invisible. So, we purposely try to figure out the way the breasts.
The curvature of the breast and make that decision along that curve to minimize the appearance as much as possible. And it’s almost negligible. The pain is something that we sometimes hear with minimally invasive surgery, but I think a lot of it has to do with how much experience you have -how big of an incision you have and how much you spread the ribs for us.
We try to make a small incision and we really don’t spread the ribs at all. Most of our patients are up and about in a couple of days or in the hospital for three or four days and back to normal in a couple of weeks. So that’s an excellent question, particularly related to women – how it affects women, how you can seal the scar, and what you can do about managing pain control.
Adam Pick: Catherine, I hope that helped you. I know it helped me and Dr. Nguyen on behalf of all the patients at HeartValveSurgery.com, patients in Miami, patients all over the world. Thanks so much for what you and your team are doing at Baptist Health South Florida in Miami, Florida. Thanks for being with me today.
Dr. Tom Nguyen: Absolutely.
