Benefits of Keyhole Heart Surgery

Dr.Amrish Kumar, 4 mins read

Significant advances in medical surgery have made keyhole heart surgery a proven procedure today, and one that is extremely safe and beneficial when done by the hands of experts. This procedure is also called minimally invasive heart surgery or minimal access heart surgery. Cardiologists may choose to go in for keyhole heart surgery as an alternative to open-heart surgery. 

Read on to learn more if you’re considering the benefits of keyhole heart surgery. With expert surgeons and cardiologists at Aakash Healthcare, you can rest assured you’ll be in the best hands for keyhole heart surgery if the procedure is suitable for you. With keyhole heart surgery patients could heal in a few days rather than months, scars are as small as 3 inches compared to 12 inches with traditional methods, scars can be concealed and some keyhole treatments won’t need any cuts whatsoever and patients can avoid open-heart surgery altogether. 

Keyhole heart surgery is a minimally invasive alternative to conventional open-heart surgery; it uses smaller incisions and does not involve breaking the breastbone to perform procedures on the valves or coronary arteries. Instead, surgeons use tiny incisions between the ribs to reach the heart, without breaking any bones.

Keyhole heart surgery is a good option to treat various cardiac conditions like mitral and aortic valve regurgitation, mitral valve and aortic valve stenosis, and tricuspid valve disease. 

Keyhole heart surgery is also used for coronary artery bypass surgery, closing holes in the heart and removing heart tumotumorse myxomas, and correcting heart rhythm defects like atrial fibrillation.

Cardiologists at Aakash ensure all candidates are comprehensively assessed before being deemed fit for either minimally invasive heart surgery or open-heart surgery.

What are the benefits of keyhole heart surgery?

No broken breastbone 

Open heart surgery using traditional methods would break a patient’s breastbone to go ahead with the surgery. Today, minimally invasive keyhole surgery has done away with that painful requirement. The surgery is carefully and meticulously performed through the gaps in the ribcage. The recovery is quicker as well because no bones are broken, about a week is good enough to heal after keyhole heart surgery, as opposed to earlier when patients needed around three months to recover from a broken breastbone.

Less visible and smaller scars 

Keeping your body intact, the way it is, free of distortions from cut marks, is something everyone is entirely entitled to, and keyhole heart surgery holds huge cosmetic and aesthetic promise. As the surgery is done through small incisions, the scars will be smaller, less visible, and in places that aren’t apparent, unlike the scars from open-heart surgery. Most scars are 3 inches in length as compared to the invariable 12-inch ones from older methods. Some of our keyhole heart surgeries at Aakash Healthcare are also performed through the groin with a wire, avoiding scarring on the chest altogether. 

Minimal Pain and very low risk of infections 

As the breastbone doesn’t need to be broken for minimally invasive keyhole heart surgery, there is considerably less pain compared to traditional open-heart surgery. However, any patient needs to give themselves some time to rest and recover, but only for a few days with this procedure. There is also hardly any risk of patients contracting a bone infection, as there are no bones that will be broken

Less recovery time 

Earlier, it took patients roughly 12 weeks to fully heal after open-heart surgery via the breastbone, and resuming daily activities could result in the bone not healing properly. Today, heart surgery with keyhole surgery allows wounds to heal within a matter of days and patients can get back to their normal life in under two weeks.

Are you a suitable candidate for minimally invasive keyhole heart surgery? 

Surgeons can reach the heart for surgery using many means and cardiac surgeons at Aakash Healthcare always try and use the tiniest incisions to perform surgery using the safest techniques and most advanced navigation technology: for ensuring the best results for our patients. You’ll have a dedicated interdisciplinary care team that will weigh all your options concerning minimally invasive techniques and traditional surgery techniques and settles on the best way forward for you after thorough assessment and testing. The parameters will include the kind of heart condition you have and how far advanced it is; also how old you are, your existing lifestyle and medical history; and results from your tests.

Learning of a heart condition or knowing you need open-heart surgery is quite daunting, and you’re bound to feel many things. We can assure you that our team of cardiologists can offer you advice and better treatment for your surgery. In case you are diagnosed with a heart condition that needs open-heart surgery, we can help you understand all your options and chart out an optimal treatment plan. 

Also, Read: What is a cardiac stent? Everything you need to know