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Approaching Finger Rock In The Catalina Foothills by Chic Bee

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On my way to my Cardiac Surgeon’s office

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Isn't this Wonderful!!

Robotic Cardiac Surgery at Rambam Health Care Campus - Photo by Ofer Golan

For the first time in Israel, bypass cardiac surgery has been performed on a patient – by a three-armed robot.

Last week at Rambam, the ‘da Vinci’ robot conducted this procedure on Moshe Breyer (53) from Yokneam Illit. Up until now, da Vinci has been primarily used in urological and gynecological procedures. Two of the robot’s three arms replace the surgeons’ hands, while the third serves as a camera, which during surgery, provides 3D videos of inside the patient’s chest.

“The robot enables doctors to enter the heart without damaging the ribs, and does not require a wide opening in the chest,” says Prof. Gil Bolotin, Director of the Department of Cardiac Surgery. “This is a great advantage to the patient. The small cut reduces post-surgical pain, recovery time, and chance of infection,” he adds.

During the operation, the surgeon operates the robot from a console and a three-dimensional screen enlarges the area of surgery.

“This technology enables the bypass operation without opening the chest bone, moving the heart or connecting the patient to a heart-lung machine,” says Prof. Bolotin. “This prevents major possible complications that usually occur in open heart surgery.”

Prof. Bolotin said that he and his team were very excited before the first operation. “We went through a long learning process until we were ready to use the robot in open heart surgery.”

Breyer had suffered a massive heart attack, had compromised day-to-day function and was on daily medication. When Prof. Bolotin explained to him that the operation represented a solution with only minimal damage to the chest, the patient said he’d do what was necessary.

Breyer’s wife Ofra, remains staunchly loyal to the human team, which included Prof. Bolotin, Dr. Zvi Peled, both cardiac surgeons, Dr. Avishai Ziser (anesthesiologist) and Dr. Carey Titin, a Finnish cardiac surgeon who came to Rambam to teach the procedure. “Maybe the robot did the operation,” said Ofra Breyer, “but it was really the doctors who saved my husband’s life.”

Dr. Christiaan Barnard Autographed / Signed Photos - Performed the World's First Heart Transplant (Barnard) by Treasures from the Past

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B & W Glossy Photograph of "Chris Barnard" with his wife Barbara Zoellner - they had two children: Frederick (born 1972) and Christiaan Jr. (born 1974).

Christiaan Neethling Barnard (8 November 1922 – 2 September 2001) was a South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant operation. On 3 December 1967, Barnard transplanted the heart of accident victim Denise Darvall into the chest of 54-year-old Louis Washkansky, who regained full consciousness and was able to talk easily with his wife, before dying 18 days later of pneumonia, largely brought on by the anti-rejection drugs that suppressed his immune system. Barnard had told Mr. and Mrs. Washkansky that the operation had an 80% chance of success, an assessment which has been criticized as misleading. Barnard's second transplant patient, Philip Blaiberg, whose operation was performed at the beginning of 1968, returned home from the hospital and lived for a year and a half.

Born in Beaufort West, Cape Province, Barnard studied medicine and practiced for several years in his native South Africa. As a young doctor experimenting on dogs, Barnard developed a remedy for the infant defect of intestinal atresia. His technique saved the lives of ten babies in Cape Town and was adopted by surgeons in Britain and the United States. In 1955, he travelled to the United States and was initially assigned further gastrointestinal work by Owen Harding Wangensteen at the University of Minnesota. He was introduced to the heart-lung machine, and Barnard was allowed to transfer to the service run by open heart surgery pioneer Walt Lillehei. Upon returning to South Africa in 1958, Barnard was appointed head of the Department of Experimental Surgery at the Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town.

He retired as head of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery in Cape Town in 1983 after rheumatoid arthritis in his hands ended his surgical career. He became interested in anti-aging research, and in 1986 his reputation suffered when he promoted Glycel, an expensive "anti-aging" skin cream, whose approval was withdrawn by the United States Food and Drug Administration soon thereafter. During his remaining years, he established the Christiaan Barnard Foundation, dedicated to helping underprivileged children throughout the world. He died in 2001 at the age of 78 in Paphos, Cyprus after an asthma attack.

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