New minimally invasive surgery offers the necessary benefits for patients
With the help of a new method, patients of Maastricht UMC + can be treated in one operation for both vascular disease (arteriosclerosis) and a cardiac arrhythmia. This is done by making just a few small cuts in the chest. Besides the fact that a second operation can be omitted, this form of operation offers a number of advantages for the patient, such as a shorter recovery time and less pain.
It can also be done the other way around
Patients requiring surgery for calcification of the coronary artery at the front of the heart also have frequent atrial fibrillation (the most common cardiac arrhythmia). It can also be the other way around: if a patient has atrial fibrillation, it also appears that coronary artery calcification is present. Normally, the choice is made to treat the heart rhythm disorder during classic open-heart surgery, or the heart rhythm disorder is not treated while the patient is being bothered by it. Depending on the severity, the cardiac arrhythmia must then be remedied at a later time. The new operation method makes that extra treatment unnecessary and has fewer side effects.
Minimally invasive with a robot
Nowadays, attempts are made to operate minimally invasive as much as possible. This means that it is not necessary to open the chest completely to get to the heart and surrounding vessels, but only a few small incisions are sufficient. Via these incisions, the surgeon can enter with his instruments and treat the cardiac arrhythmia by performing an ablation via keyhole surgery. This means that the places where the rhythm disturbance occurs on the heart are burned away, as it were. The same openings can be used to make a bypass, a bypass around the narrowed portion of the affected blood vessel. A robot allows the operator to reach the thoracic artery through a small opening between the ribs and connect to the clogged blood vessel (the bypass).
‘All-in one’
“It is an all-in one treatment”, says heart surgeon Bart Maesen of Maastricht UMC +, who performs the treatment with fellow heart surgeon Patrique Segers. “Treating atrial fibrillation is just as important as making the bypass. Why not perform it at the same time, so that the patient is spared an additional operation with all the associated stress. Because we use a minimally invasive technique, the recovery time remains relatively short and the patient will suffer less for a long time, as with open heart surgery. So those are not two, but more birds with one stone. ” Every year, an estimated twenty patients per year are eligible for this operation at Maastricht UMC +. In a multidisciplinary team of cardiac surgeons and cardiologists, the options for each patient are carefully discussed.
In a publication in the European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery the Maastricht specialists described their procedure earlier this year.
Photo: Cardiothoracic surgeons Patrique Segers and Bart Maesen
Source: Maastricht UMC +
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