Chapters Transcript Video Robotic Repair of Rare Congenital Cardiac Defect in a 73-Year-Old My love was always cars and particularly old cars. Eventually I opened up a small repair shop and been there for like 40 years. I started becoming aware of an irregular boom boom heartbeat, field of vision kind of narrowed. Obviously did not feel pleasant at all, and my son came over, he said, we should take you in. Doctors reminded me that I have a 5 chambered heart. The heart has 4 chambers. In one of those chambers, he had an extra membrane in there. You know, let's say you have a master bedroom. But suddenly someone puts a wall through your master bedroom and to get from one part of the master bedroom to the other, you have to go through a little door. Someside the door is, is really small, where people can't get through to the other side of the master bedroom. This is something we usually see in kids. We know a lot of patients with congenital heart disorders are actually living longer, but a lot of the expertise in congenital heart disorders are in positions that treat kids. So how do you find the. Specialists, and this is where that magic happens, and that's where we reached out to Doctor Kalfa and his team at Nicholas. We discussed about the patient's case uh with Doctor Kalfa. We saw the CT image together and we planned what to do, using a robot for heart surgery. We can do really clean surgery to date, we have done more than 140 cases, which is the highest number in Florida. On the day of the surgery, Doctor Kha came to my OR. His expertise was really valuable. I brought my expertise in terms of the actual malformation of the heart, where to cut things, how to cut things. The surgery is not necessarily more complicated. Removing this membrane and repairing this malformation in an adult or a child would be the exact same thing. Still science fiction to me, but you know, the 4 miniature robot arms go in there, a camera goes in there. I didn't feel a thing. I was very happy with all aspects of care. I'm very grateful for their work. I mean, I think they have to do it out of an internal drive to explore the boundaries, you know, where man has not gone before. Between Nicholas and Baptist, we believe that we'll be able to treat a lot more patients out there with adult congenital abnormalities to really bring that level of expertise and passion to be able to treat that disease process as effectively as possible. Having a very close collaboration between Betty's Health, Heart and Vascular Care and Nicholaus Children's Heart Institute brings specific expertise both in pediatric. In congenital and also in adult and robotic cardiac surgery is the way to go. I would say recovery went very well. Well, kind of back to what I was doing before it all. I went to Houston to see my cousins, did the strong walking tour of the missions in the Alamo. Felt great. I'm so glad that my patient is doing well. Give him a second chance is my reason for being a surgeon. Created by
