Closed Chest Coronary Artery Bypass on the Beating Heart

(#2000-0380 Ö June 8, 2000)

Utz Kappert, MD,¹ Romuald Cichon, MD,¹ Vassilios Gulielmos, MD,¹ Jens Schneider, MD,¹ Ina Schramm, MD,¹ Joachim Nicolai, MD,² Sems-Malte Tugtekin, MD,¹ Stephan Schueler, MD, PhD¹

¹Department of Cardiac Surgery, Cardiovascular Institute, University of Dresden, Germany
²Department of Anesthesiology, Cardiovascular Institute, University of Dresden, Germany

ABSTRACT

Minimally invasive surgical procedures have become a part of routine cardiac surgery. The surgical techniques have been developed for the treatment of coronary artery disease in order to minimize surgical trauma.

With the introduction of a 3-D-based totally endoscopically functioning system into mini-mally invasive cardiac (MIC) surgery, further reduction of skin incisions became possible and enhanced MIC techniques could be improved. Due to the 6° freedom of motion allowed by wrist-enhanced instruments and a newly developed endoscopic stabilizer, totally endoscopic coronary artery bypass procedures on a beating heart became feasible.

We present here our initial series of totally endoscopic "off-pump" coronary artery bypass grafting in patients suffering from coronary artery single vessel disease. In all patients, the procedure was successfully performed via four 1 cm chest incisions as closed-chest procedures.

AUTHOR/ARTICLE INFORMATION

Presented at the Third Annual Meeting of the International Society for Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery, Atlanta, Georgia, June 8-10, 2000

Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Stephan Schueler, MD, PhD, Cardiovascular Institute, University of Dresden, Fetscherstrasse 76, D-01307 Dresden, Germany, Phone: +49 351 450 1801, Fax: +49 351 450 1802, E-mail: Monika.Weber.hkz_dd@t-online.de

Key Words: Endoscopic cardiac surgery; Totally endoscopic coronary artery bypass, Robotics