The Georgia Heart Institute and Northeast Georgia Physicians Group Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery completed their first robotic heart surgery on February 7.
T. Sloane Guy, MD, a robotic heart surgeon and the director of Minimally Invasive and Robotic Heart Surgery at NGPG operated on Bill Mayfield who had been admitted into the hospital with heart failure. Mayfield traveled from Minnesota to have the surgery in Gainesville.
“He was found to have severe leakiness of his mitral valve," Dr. Guy said. "And basically, the reason you get heart failure, which is really just fluid backing up on the lung, is because blood is going in the wrong direction, it's going back towards the lung, rather than towards the body.”
Dr. Guy said Mayfield had a valve that could be repaired durably. After explaining that there was a less invasive robotic surgery option, Mayfield did some research on his own and decided to have the surgery in Gainesville.
The surgery is performed through 8-millimeter incisions and allows for faster recovery times. According to Dr. Guy, the robot does not do anything automatically. He controls it and performs the surgery with a large team.
“We start out by putting the five, eight-millimeter ports in the right chest," he said. "That's four ports that we use for the robotic instruments, the right arm, the left arm, and retractor arm and a camera port."
The fifth is the working port, which allows the bedside team to hand the surgeon items needed for the surgery as well as perform other duties from the bedside. The surgery takes about four hours on average, but the preparation going into the operating room and after takes much longer.
“The team knows everything about that patient before they get wheeled into the operating room and I'm a former military man," Dr. Guy said. "So I believe that every battle is won or lost before you step onto the battlefield and our battlefield is the operating room."
Mayfield was able to leave the hospital two days after his surgery.
“Just two days after the surgery, I was leaving the hospital and feeling great," Mayfield said in a press release. "I can’t believe what the team was able to do through these tiny incisions. I remember when my brother had open heart surgery, and this is a totally different experience."
According to Dr. Guy, robotic surgery has been a growing part of all specialties.
“In fact, the mass majority of prostate surgeries in the United States are done robotically now,” Dr. Guy said. “Cardiac surgery is lagging behind except for select centers. Because it's a little bit more complicated than some of those operations, but I've dedicated my life to advancing that.”
To know more about his work and robotic heart surgery you can visit Dr. Guy’s website at roboticheartsurgeon.com.
To schedule an appointment with NGPG Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, call 770-219-7099. To schedule an appointment with one of Georgia Heart Institute’s cardiologists, visit georgiaheartinstitute.org or call 770-534-2020.
