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Figure 11.5
da Vinci system. PDA Robotics

Robotic Heart Surgery: Making Repairs without Lifting the Hood. In
the United States, open-heart surgery was performed without opening
the chest, in more than a dozen patients. Researchers reported pre-
liminary results at the American Heart Association’s Scientific
Sessions in 2002.

In this procedure, surgeons remotely maneuver robotic arms from a seat
in front of a console away from the patient. Instead of opening the chest
and cutting the skin and muscle to view the area, surgeons make four
holes (8 to 15 mm each), through which robotic arms are inserted. The
robotic arms include one with a camera-like device to transmit the image
to the console. The other arms are fitted with operating instruments.

Surgeons used this new procedure to successfully repair the hearts of
patients with atrial septal defect (ASD) or patent foramen ovale—con-
ditions in which people are born with an opening between the heart’s
two upper chambers. This opening allows some blood from the left
atrium to return to the right atrium, instead of flowing through the left
ventricle, out the aorta, and to the body. It is repaired either by plug-
ging the hole with a patch or suturing the hole closed.
Open-heart surgery traditionally requires that surgeons make a foot-
long chest incision to cut patients’ breastbones in half. “We wanted to
know if it was possible to operate inside the hearts of these patients

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