Let a Robot Into Your Heart…

The Future of Minimally-Invasive Surgery Is Here

Space age technology has made its way into the operating room, and interdisciplinary teams of experts at Montefiore Medical Center are using it to change the future of medicine – today. Surgeons now can use a robot, called the da Vinci^® Surgical System, to perform a variety of minimally-invasive procedures, including complex heart surgeries. The robot doesn’t “operate” on patients or replace the skill and experience of surgeons. Rather, it’s a groundbreaking tool that has made it easier than ever for surgeons to perform intricate procedures.

“The robot is an exciting advance in cardiac surgery,” says Joseph DeRose Jr., MD, director of Minimally-Invasive and Robotic Cardiac Surgery, Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Montefiore Medical Center. He is a member of one of the nation’s leading teams of experts at the Montefiore-Einstein Heart Center.

“Performing conventional minimally-invasive procedures with thin catheters and small instruments is like using chopsticks,” Dr. DeRose says. “The robot, however, is so accurate that it’s even better than using our own hands. It has more range-of-motion and flexibility than the human hand. It eliminates normal tremors. And we can scale its movements so we can do very fine work in small areas.”

Conventional open-heart surgery involves making a large incision in the chest and opening the breast bone to gain access to the heart. When using da Vinci, surgeons make small ports on a patient’s sides and place the robot’s two “arms” inside those ports. The arms are equipped with special surgical instruments and a camera that takes 3-D images inside the body. Surgeons then sit at a computer console and place their hands in loops that transmit information directly to the robot. As surgeons move their hands, the robot performs the same real-time motions inside the patient’s body.

Surgeons at the Montefiore-Einstein Heart Center use da Vinci to make some minimally-invasive cardiac procedures even less invasive – such as off-pump bypass, mitral valve repairs and procedures to close holes in or remove tumors from the heart. The surgical system is so sophisticated that surgeons were able to develop new, less invasive techniques for placing biventricular pacemakers and performing atrial fibrillation surgery. The robot also allows surgeons to treat many patients who are too sick or frail for traditional open-heart surgery.

The Montefiore-Einstein Heart Center can perform every cardiac robotic procedure available anywhere. Surgeons at the Heart Center helped pioneer this innovative technology, and through their research, they are educating the medical community and patients about the use of robots in minimally-invasive cardiac surgery. “Robotic technology is the future of surgery. Along with vision and imagination, it opens the door to endless possibilities in the field,” Dr. DeRose says.

For more information about the Montefiore-Einstein Heart Center, please call 1-800-MD-MONTE or visit www.montefiore.org/heart.