Robot Heart
Bypass Makes History Robot Heart
Bypass Makes History|
The Toronto Sun, Thursday
October 7 By MARY-IANE EGAN Canada has scored a world's first in the race to simplify heart surgery, using a robot to help perform a heart bypass on a rural Ontario man without even opening his chest. Surgeons at London Health Sciences Centre's university campus announced yesterday the first successful closed-chest, robotic-assisted, beating-heart bypass. The breakthrough could revolutionize surgery by transforming complex operations into out-patient procedures or one-day hospital admissions, cardiac surgeon Doug Boyd believes. |
| The six-hour operation Sept. 24 on dairy farmer John Penner, 6O, of Seaforth, was the culmination of three years of surgical work to achieve what surgeons consider the "holy grail" of heart surgery-the ability to perform the entire procedure on a beating heart through tiny incisions, without cracking open the patient's chest. |
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London is setting international standards in the advancing field of minimally invasive or "keyhole" surgery, said Tony Dagnone, president of the health sciences centre. "Not only is this much less pain and trauma for the patient but it's much better value for health dollars," he said. Boyd, who did the procedure while seated almost two metres from the patient at a computerized, robotic console, said the benefits to patients and in reduced hospital costs are enormous. London's closest competitor in minimal invasive cardiac surgery is a team in Munich, Germany. It performed a similar procedure, but had to stop the heart and put the patient on a heart lung machine during surgery. Operating on a beating heart-a unique feat the London team has perfected-saves the patient the risk of stroke, fluid imbalance and other complications from having to still the heart, Boyd said. Penner, who told a news conference he's "never felt better," was discharged four days after surgery. With traditional methods, heart surgery would have required at least a week-long hospital stay. Voice-activated camera Rather than make a chest-long incision to access Penner's heart, Boyd's team used three pencil-sized incisions and a small working incision through which 3- and 5-mm surgical instruments were inserted to repair the blocked artery. A tiny, voice-activated camera allowed Boyd to perform precise micro-movements imperceptible to the human eye. Sutures-no wider than two to three human hairs-completed the procedure, eliminating error from human hand tremor. Boyd said his team will apply the new technology gradually, starting with about 5% of the 1,700 bypass surgeries performed by the centre every year, but ultimately expanding to up to 30%. |
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