Development of robotic enhanced endoscopic surgery for the treatment of coronary artery disease

Background-The introduction of robotic enhanced surgery demanded stepwise d evelopment of per-formed procedures on the basis of growing experience of t he operating team. Methods and Results-Between May 1999 and January 2001, this new wrist-enhan ced instrumentation was used in 201 patients (156 men and 45 women, median age 64 +/- 10.5 years, left ventricular ejection fraction 68 +/- 12.4%). Du ring the development of robotic enhanced CABG, the patients were divided in to 3 groups. Group A (n=156) consisted of patients in whom the robotic syst em was used to harvesting the left or right internal mammary artery, or bot h, whereas the anastomoses were performed directly through a small chest in cision. In group B (n=37), the harvest of the internal mammary arteries and the coronary anastomoses were per-formed totally endoscopically. In a thir d early group C, patient (n=8) were treated with robotic enhanced CABG via a median sternotomy already preoperatively planned, whereas gradual step-by -step application of robotic instrumentation and its feasibility were asses sed. The survival rate was 99.4%. One patient (0.6%) died due to pneumonia on postoperative day 16. Conversion rate to median sternotomy was 5%. The l eft and right internal mammary artery conduits could be successfully harves ted in 98% and 100%, respectively. The time of dissection of the left inter nal mammary artery could be significantly reduced alone by increasing exper ience. All patients were discharged from the hospital after a mean of 7 day s. In 9 patients (4.5%), bleeding required reexploration. Conclusions-The introduction of this new surgical tool enables the developm ent of new endoscopic procedures. Our results gained during the development of robotic enhanced CABG motivate us to establish a set standard for the t otally endoscopic treatment of patients with I-vessel coronary artery disea se.