Robotic Heart Bypass Surgery

Coronary artery bypass grafting refers to a surgical treatment used for patients who have one or more coronary arteries blocked. This procedure involves grafting of a new blood vessel that bypasses the clogged artery and allows sufficient blood flow to the cardiac muscles.

There have been many improvements in terms of developing various approaches of minimally invasive surgeries and robotic-assisted procedure is one such milestone. It comes with various advantages. A normal traditional open-heart surgery involves cutting the chest and dividing the breast bone. It is known as the median sternotomy approach and demands a 10 – 12 inch incision through the sternal bone. However, the robotic procedure involves much smaller incisions between the ribs. Major incisions are avoided and it doesn’t involve cutting the sternum as a result of which the traumatic impact of the surgery is reduced in large number. This leads to less pain, faster recover, lesser blood loss during the procedure and lesser complications. It also allows the surgeon to have better view of the heart as opposed to a traditional surgery.

There are two main techniques used in this surgery –

Minimally-invasive direct coronary artery bypass: This technique is also known MIDCAB, it is a sort of a grafting which includes mammary artery graft that is dissected inside the chest. Using three pencil-sized incisions and later following the suturing of the mammary artery graft to the heart vessel with a 2-inch incision made between the ribs in the left chest. This procedure can also be done without putting the patient on a heart-lung machine and is therefore also referred to as the “off pump” procedure.

Totally endoscopic coronary artery bypass: This technique is also known as TRCAB, it is a sort of a grafting which includes entire procedure being done through three ports themselves and not requiring any additional incisions.