Chennai: Apollo Hospitals became the first in India to do minimally invasive, robotic hybrid revascularisation surgery, performed on a 63-year-old patient suffering from blockages in blood vessels.
J Malliga from Ambattur had been suffering from chest pain for more than six months because of blocks in two major blood vessels and underwent the surgery performed by Dr M M Yusuf and his team.
“Malliga had been a diabetic for 15 years and she was brought to the hospital on 18 February. Since she has diabetes and high blood pressure, this new procedure was recommended. This procedure is suitable for diabetics with multiple blocks. If we do stenting for such blocks, there are chances of recurring of blocks. Also, if we did the usual surgery of splitting the chest bone, it would have taken a lot more time to heal,” said Damodharan, senior consultant cardiologist of the hospital.
The procedure was a combination of minimally invasive coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery with robotic assistance, followed by aĀ stenting procedure.
“In minimally invasive robotic hybrid revascularisation, we did bypass surgery for major blocks just by making around 3cm incision on her chest under the breast and the artery grafting was performed with robotic assistance. There was no blood loss,” said Dr Yusuf.
The CABG using a robot was done under the guidance of Frank Van Praet, director of Robotic and Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery, OLV Hospital, Belgium. This procedure helped in the quick recovery of the patient who returned to normal life within days, said the surgeon. There was also minimal scarring.