Robotic-Assisted Heart Surgery

Heart surgery can be performed using traditional (open) surgery or through minimally invasive surgery that uses a few small incisions between your ribs. With conventional minimally invasive heart surgery, a surgeon uses a long, thin tube called a thoracoscope that has a light and tiny camera at the end. Images from the camera guide surgeons as they operate.

Minimally invasive robotic-assisted surgery is similar to thoracoscopic surgery, but uses an advanced robotic platform outfitted with a tiny high-resolution camera and multiple arms. Each arm is equipped with micro-instruments that can rotate 360 degrees to better access your surgical site. The system magnifies, scales, filters, controls for hand tremor and seamlessly translates your surgeon's hand movements into precise micro-movements of the medical instruments. 

Robotic-assisted heart surgery offers many potential benefits over traditional, open-heart surgery, including:

• Less pain
• Less blood loss
• Reduced need for blood transfusions
• Fewer complications
• Faster recovery times
• Smaller incisions for minimal scarring

Our surgical team can perform the following robotic heart procedures at a location near you:

• Mitral valve repair - to fix mitral valve prolapse, a condition that occurs when the valve between the heart’s left upper chamber and left lower chamber of your heart do not close evenly
• Tricuspid valve repair - to repair or replace the tricuspid valve when it does not function properly
• Intracardiac tumors - to remove tumors that may block blood flow through the heart chambers
• Correction of atrial fibrillation - to fix an irregular heartbeat that could lead to blood clots, heart failure or stroke if left untreated
• Coronary bypass surgery (for very select cases) - a procedure that repairs a blocked artery and restores blood flow to your heart by diverting blood flow around the blockage