{"id":5622,"date":"2025-05-12T04:56:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T04:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/?page_id=5622"},"modified":"2025-10-23T17:54:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T17:54:06","slug":"minimally-invasive-women-scar-pain","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/minimally-invasive-women-scar-pain\/","title":{"rendered":"Scars &#038; Pain: Minimally Invasive Heart Valve Surgery from a Women\u2019s Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>However, many women still have concerns about scarring and pain associated with minimally-invasive surgery. Specific to this point, Catherine recently wrote to us, \u201cI\u2019m interested in knowing what people\u2019s true experience is with minimally invasive surgery, especially women. I\u2019ve 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?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To answer Catherine\u2019s questions, we were thrilled to interview <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Tom-Nguyen-Miami-Florida.php\">Dr. Tom Nguyen<\/a>, 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\u2019s question.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Aic6XgGRbCU?rel=0&amp;si=JASDnxPDFz-RfA1U\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Facts About Women and Minimally Invasive Heart Valve Surgery<\/h2>\n<p>Here are the key insights shared by Dr. Nguyen:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Scarring can be a significant concern for women. \u201cThe 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,\u201d stated Dr. Nguyen. \u201cSomething we don\u2019t 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\u2019re reminded that you\u2019ve had open heart surgery, and your heart needs to be fixed.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/profileImages\/491_129_161.jpg?d=20241206\" alt=\"Dr. Tom Nguyen\" width=\"129\" height=\"161\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Tom-Nguyen-Miami-Florida.php\">Dr. Tom Nguyen<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Concealing scars with minimally invasive surgery. \u201cOne of the advantages of minimally invasive surgery is we get to conceal all of those scars,\u201d said Dr. Nguyen. \u201cRelated to women, I think it\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5623 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/..\/Images\/minimally-invasive-advantage.jpg\" alt=\"Advantage of Minimally Invasive Heart Valve Surgery\" width=\"650\" height=\"361\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Pain is often related to a surgeon\u2019s experience and how they operate. \u201cThe 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\u2019s also related to how big the incision is and how much we spread the ribs,\u201d explained Dr. Nguyen. \u201cWe try to make a small incision, and we don\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5624 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/..\/Images\/pain-minimally-invasive-approach.jpg\" alt=\"How Pain Is Limited with Minimally Invasive Approaches\" width=\"650\" height=\"361\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Thanks Dr. Nguyen and Baptist Health South Florida!<\/h2>\n<p>On behalf of all the patients in our community, many thanks to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Tom-Nguyen-Miami-Florida.php\">Dr. Tom Nguyen<\/a>, for everything you and your team are doing at Baptist Health Miami Cardiac &amp; Vascular Institute!<\/p>\n<p>Related links:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Tom-Nguyen-Miami-Florida.php\">See Dr. Tom Nguyen\u2019s Interactive Surgeon Profile<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/hospital\/baptist-health-south-florida\">Learn more at the Baptist Health South Florida Heart Valve Microsite<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/smart-clinical-trial-women-aortic-stenosis\/\">Women\u2019s Heart Health Alert: The SMART Clinical Trial<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Keep on tickin,<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"cms.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"class_list":["post-5622","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","category-before-surgery"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5622"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6213,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5622\/revisions\/6213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}