Dr. Sloane Guy, Robotic Cardiothoracic Surgeon, and Director of Robotic Cardiac Surgery, sits down with Dr. John "Clifton" Hastings, Cardiothoracic Surgeon, to discuss innovative robotic surgery and the benefits to patients who require this procedure. Learn More About Sloane Guy, MD and The New Robotic Cardiac Surgery Services
Well. Doctor Guy Welcome to Gainesville Georgia and Northeast Georgia Medical Center. We are thrilled that you are with us. Tell me just a little brief bio of who you are and what you're doing here. I'm a cardiothoracic surgeon with a particular interest in robotic heart surgery. This whole idea of robotic surgery is fascinating to me. Can you might just do this from home, do you call it in? How does the whole robot thing work currently? We don't do it from home. I think the best way to answer that question is look back at the history of robotics. The robotic surgical system came about as a result of a Department of Defense and Nasa research project. Their desire was to do exactly what you just said, remote tele surgery. It turned out that that was not really practical and still is not practical. Some very smart people realized however, that it could be used for minimally invasive cardiac surgery as a tele operated system but within the same operating room. From a patient's perspective, why would I want to have my mitral valve repairs robotically versus open. I think it's pretty common sense that the smaller incisions, you can make the less damage you do to the human body. So many surgeons in the past really underestimated what a negative impact large incisions have on patients. So when I do heart surgery with the robot, my biggest incision is about the diameter of pen. One of the nice things about the robotic system is it has a robotically controlled camera that has basically two cameras on the tip with depth perception. So it's actually as good as you and I are looking at each other Now if not better. When I do a robotic mitral valve repair, I drive that camera right into the heart. The mitral valve is in front of me and you can see it just wonderfully Well. You know a lot of patients expressed concern. Do I really want a robot operating on me? And what I tell them is it's really not the robotic system that's operating on you. It's a tool, just like a pair of scissors. You're not cutting the string that you cut. You are operating an instrument, the robots an instrument in the same way.
