The length varies depending on the patient and the complexity of the procedure. The actual surgical part of the operation is only 3-4 hours long. However, the preparatory time for the procedure and the initial recovery time means you may be in the operating room for 5-6 hours. The total time a patient is on the heart lung machine is no more than 2 hours in most cases. While these times may be longer than if we did your procedure through a sternotomy (breastplate sawed open), this has not been shown to negatively impact outcome. In fact there are many large series of robotic mitral valve procedures that show outcomes superior to the national averages for the same procedure done through sternotomy.
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Questions about Robotic Cardiac Surgery Procedures
