WORLD’S FIRST ROBOTIC ASSISTED DOUBLE VALVE REPLACEMENT HEART SURGERY
Posted on: 04/Mar/2011 2:54:48 AM
The World’s First Robotic Assisted Double Valve Replacement Heart surgery was performed at the Chettinad Health City, a state of the Art Multi-Specialty hospital at Kelambakkam on the IT corridor in Chennai, India. The surgery was performed on a 23 yr old man, a driver by profession, by Dr. R. Ravi Kumar, Director, Institute of Cardio Vascular Disease and his team.
Announcing this at a Media Conference, Dr. Ravi Kumar said, “Robotic assisted Cardiac surgery was introduced in the year 2000 in USA. Robotic surgery was a novel change in medical therapy that was soon recognized all over the world for its accuracy. The First Mitral Valve was repaired by Dr.Chitwood in the USA. Over the decade, many attempts & advances have been made in robotic surgery to replace and repair heart valves.Single valve repair & replacement in mitral position have been successful since the beginning. The First Mitral Valve replacement using robotic assistance was done in India during 2006. Replacement of Aortic Valve was successfully done at Chettinad Health City in December, 2007. But the art of using robotic surgery was never attempted for double valve replacement. This process has been considered technically challenging until now”.
A team of doctors led by Dr. Ravi Kumar and assisted with a high precision robot created history on 21st Feb 2011, when they successfully performed the operation and replaced the damaged valves. The patient who underwent the surgery was present at the media conference and was cheerful and doing well.
In the past, we have done many challenging surgeries like the Pulmonary Thromboendarterectomy (PTE), operating on a patient with a rare condition called Situs Inversus Solitaris with Dextrocardia etc., however in this case it was more difficult since we noticed that the patient needed to have two valves replaced simultaneously, if he had to recover and lead a normal life
The patient a 23 yr old man, complaining of shortness of breath even at rest, could walk about only 10 to 15 feet. After evaluation of which included routine tests and an echocardiogram,, patient was diagonised to have rheumatic valvular disease. He had mitral regurtation (leak), mitral stenosis and aortic valve regurtation (leak).The patient was put on a bypass machine and the heart was stopped. Using robotic assistance both the valves were removed and replaced with mechanical Mitral and Aortic valves
