Coronary Artery Surgery: How Is It Enhanced By The da Vinci® Robot? - Dr. Raczkowski
Dr. Raczkowski explains how the da Vinci® robot enhances coronary artery surgery.
More Videos from Dr. Allen Raczkowski 11 videos in this series
Dr. Raczkowski:
But primarily we use coronary artery bypass surgery in the minimally robotic cardiac sense, I guess, limited mostly to one or two vessel bypasses. Now, there’s a significant improvement in patients who have the artery, the left internal mammary artery placed onto those vessels, the LAD or the diagonal. We know from many, many years of experience using the internal mammary artery that it is the very best graft and in fact, is better than other minimally invasive techniques such as stenting.
However, the big barrier to getting those better results has always been that you’d have to perform a sternotomy. Most patients do not want to undergo traditional heart surgery, including sternotomy, for single vessel bypasses. They would rather resort to a less invasive technique even though the results may not be anywhere near as good.
Because of the advent of using the robot with the single and two-vessel bypasses, we can give the patients the same benefit of those long-lasting bypass grafts, arterial graft, yet with a comparable morbidity or trauma to the patient such as stenting. As an example, patients who have single-vessel bypasses done with the da Vinci® robot using the left internal mammary artery generally stay in the hospital 48 hours. They can usually resume all their normal activities within a week.
This is essentially the same process that patients who have stenting in the vessel would undergo. So, from the standpoint of trauma to the patient, whatever procedure they have, it’s almost identical. Yet the long-term benefits of having an artery bypass, arterial bypass to the front artery is so substantially better that we are very enthused that this is a good technique, especially for younger patients who you want to have a more long-term effect.
Recovery time for coronary artery bypass surgery done with the robot is substantially less. Average length of stay for a standard sternotomy bypass, whether it’s one or three vessels, still is about six days of hospitalization, two weeks before about 60% of the normal activity and at least 12 weeks restricted activities till the sternum has enough strength.
For robotic minimally invasive surgery, most patients stay around 48 to 72 hours, can usually resume all their normal activities within a week, including driving.
About Dr. Raczkowski, M.D.:
Dr. Allen Raczkowski, certified by the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, leads the robotic heart surgery program at Banner Heart Hospital. He has performed nearly 400 procedures using that surgical system, making the Banner Heart Hospital robotic surgery program one of the top three in the nation.
