Fellow Leads World's First in Robotic Cardiac Surgery

An ACS Fellow and his team at the West Virginia University (WVU) Heart and Vascular Institute recently performed the world’s first combined robotic valve replacement and coronary artery bypass operation. 

Led by Vinay Badhwar, MD, FACS, the Institute’s executive chair and Gordon F. Murray Professor and chair of the Department of Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery at the WVU School of Medicine in Morgantown, the procedure used a robotic cardiac platform that Dr. Badhwar helped to develop.

The operation involved a single 4 cm right lateral transaxillary incision on a 73-year-old female patient with severe aortic insufficiency, 70% left anterior descending artery stenosis, and ejection fraction of 35% with recalcitrant symptoms. She had suffered a stroke in 2023, was frail, and had a body mass index of 17.

Traditionally, patients who require both coronary bypass and valve replacement undergo open surgery. For this high-risk patient, Dr. Badhwar estimated a 10% chance of mortality and a 50% chance of complications.

“While we are still in the early days of this latest innovation, the ability to perform valve surgery and coronary artery bypass surgery fully robotically through a single incision has the potential to open up a new era of robotic heart surgery,” Dr. Badhwar said. “We must always keep quality outcomes at the forefront of all innovation. However, if surgeons adopt and gain experience with techniques such as this one, we will tackle this last frontier that previously limited a robotic approach. One day in the near future, this may serve as a platform to perform nearly all types of heart surgery.”