2 weeks ago
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INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Imagine your heart not functioning properly and not knowing for years; that’s the reality of people with aortic valve disease. Symptoms include chest pain, dizziness, fatigue, and irregular heartbeat. If the disease is above a mild or moderate state, the only option has been surgery.
However, now there’s a new option.
When your aortic heart valve stops working, it puts you at risk for heart failure and stroke. Standard surgery involves big chest incisions, which can have painful recoveries. However, Cleveland Clinic has a new option called transcervical robotic aortic valve replacement.
“This is the first open heart surgery that we do that does not require any major incisions on a chest wall. And it basically only involves an incision on the lower neck with some small, less than a centimeter incision on a chest wall that are pretty much healable on its own,” Marijan Koprivanac, MD, staff physician at Cleveland Clinic explained.
This surgery is assisted by a robot that is big on the outside but precise inside the body. “Everything that robot is doing is what I do with my...
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