For more than 50 years, heart surgery has moved away from catastrophic open-chest operations to catheterization, where doctors insert stents or even instruments through a vein in the leg.
Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center may reverse that trend. A robot in Baltimore replaced two critically blocked arteries in a Pasedena man?s heart through dime-sized incisions in his chest two weeks ago.
Roger Suter, 58, is waiting for his doctors? and wife?s approval to return to work at his furniture company.
“Three weeks ago I was just a regular working-class guy,” Suter said. “I was unloading furniture and started getting pains across my chest.”
He received two bypass splices and a third coronary artery was opened by a stent.
Robots have been used to assist in abdominal surgery for years, especially in urological and prostate surgery, said Dr. James Borin, director of robotic surgery at UMMC, which is pioneering robot-assisted cardiac surgery.
The robot “allows you to do surgery inside the chest without opening the whole chest,” said surgeon Robert Poston, who performed the surgery. “There?s a lot less inflammation and bleeding.”
University of Maryland doctors unveiled their robot Wednesday ? a six-month-old da Vinci S model with four multi-jointed arms suspended from a frame. Surgical tools on long rods include varying sizes of gripping and cutting tips.
Surgeons operate remotely through a combination of finger grips, joystick motions and foot pedals. One tool supplies stereoscopic 3-D video, concealing two cameras and a powerful light in a deceptively slender tube. The robot is remarkably easy to manipulate and use, Poston said. Robotic surgery benefits patients and doctors.
“With the robot, we make a dime-sized incision. They don?t hurt as much. There?s a faster recovery time and it looks better cosmetically,” Borin said.
Robotic “hands” eliminate tremors, while on-site magnification and enhanced dexterity contribute to a less-traumatic operation.
The robot may also make heart surgery more attractive than using a catheter through the leg to re-open clogged arteries with stents, said Bartley Griffith, chief of cardiac surgery. Though angioplasty and stents have replaced most heart surgery, UMMC performs 400 surgeries a year when a catheter simply won?t do.
“Stents are not perfect and they?re not as good as a heart artery bypass with a real artery,” Griffith said. “We?re beginning to push back” against the catheterization trend with this operation.
Suter approved.
“I have a two-week checkup this afternoon. If I can lobby the doctor and maybe my wife, hopefully, I can go back to work,” he said.
