Recovery, Cost and Outcomes After Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery

Minimally invasive surgery is definitely costlier than regular surgery because we use specially designed instruments, and robotic surgery is even more costly because the robotic instruments and system are costly. So it's going to be costlier, maybe one and a half times than regular surgery, but you gain more: you can start working in three weeks instead of losing three months, there is less pain, early hospital discharge, less blood loss and less ICU stay. So these are the advantages, but definitely minimally invasive and robotic surgery is more expensive than conventional surgery.

There are two things: technique and technology. Even though you are trained, you should also have the hardware in your country; a robotic system is very expensive, but I am currently operating on some patients from Ethiopia and they are affording the minimally invasive and robotic surgery they ask for. You are welcome to come and have a short visit, maybe one week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, whatever you can manage, and get trained. If you require, we can go and proctor you for a few cases there too. Before that, if you have patients, definitely refer them; you can come with the patient, watch, and that is the way to train. You can't become a minimally invasive or robotic surgeon in day one. Before I started I must have visited 15 countries across Europe and North America to get trained, and then I was proctored by surgeons across the world at some of the best centres. I have done around 3,500 minimally invasive cardiac surgeries and around 7,700 robotic surgeries. We also formed a society, so you can come and participate in our annual meeting. We are going to very soon start a fellowship program through our society, and we can give some financial assistance to people who are interested in this area, though that will be a visiting fellowship for a week or so.

Yes, with the help of a robot we can unroof the myocardial bridge without opening the chest. It's possible, provided we can locate the exact site of the bridge, and this is absolutely the best way to go, because we are not going to open the chest. With the robot, we unbridge that segment of the LIMA and remove the bridging myocardium.

I don't do congenital cases. In congenital cases I only do ASD closure, sinus venosus ASDs and second-time ASDs. I don't do tetralogy of Fallot, but there are surgeons who are doing tetralogy of Fallot repair with a minimal access approach. If you have a patient, you can reach out to us and we'll help you get to the correct doctor at Manipal Hospital. In Manipal Bangalore we have cardiac surgeons doing tetralogy of Fallot repair with a minimal access approach.

Yes, there is always a possibility of failed repair, so the patient may require re-repair or replacement. Cleveland Clinic data shows that even in degenerative disease there is significant failure of repair after 10 years, and in a rheumatic segment specifically the failure rate is quite a bit higher. When we replace the valve with a tissue valve, we know that after 10 to 15 years tissue valves are going to fail. We now have a percutaneous TAVI valve which can be implanted without surgery if the patient already has a tissue valve in the aortic or mitral position. For a mechanical valve, if there is a failure in the form of a paravalvular leak or thrombus formation, we either do thrombolysis or have to re-replace the mechanical valve.