Robotic totally endoscopic coronary artery bypass grafting: current status and future prospects.

Robotic totally endoscopic coronary artery bypass grafting: current status and future prospects. Expert Rev Med Devices. 2019 Dec 12;: Authors: Bonatti J, Wallner S, Winkler B, Grabenwoeger M Abstract Introduction: Totally endoscopic coronary artery bypass grafting (TECAB) can only be performed in a reproducible manner using robotic technology. This operation has been developed for more than 20 years seeing three generations of surgical robots. TECAB can be carried out beating heart but also on the arrested heart. Single and multiple grafts can be placed and TECAB can be combined with percutaneous coronary intervention in hybrid procedures.Areas covered: This review outlines indications for the procedure, the surgical technique, and the postoperative care. Intra- and postoperative results as available in the literature are reported. Further areas focus on the technological development, training methods, learning curves as well as on cost. Finally, we give an outlook on the potential future of this operation.Expert opinion: Robotic TECAB represents a complex, sophisticated but safe and over the years grown procedure. Even though results seem to be in line with conventional coronary surgery worldwide adoption still has been slow probably due to procedure times, costs and learning curves. Main advantages of TECAB are minimized surgical trauma and subsequent reduction of postoperative healing time. With the current introduction of new ro...
Source: Expert Review of Medical Devices - Category: Medical Devices Tags: Expert Rev Med Devices Source Type: research