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Doctors perform big operations through a little 'keyhole'
January 16, 1997
Web posted at: 11:45 p.m. ESTNEW YORK (CNN) -- Surgeons in New York City have completed the world's first triple bypass using so-called "keyhole" surgery techniques.
"I don't feel like I was a pioneer," said Thomas Lee, the first patient to undergo triple coronary surgery with this technique. "I just lay there. The doctors were pioneers. I just happened to be the ground they walked over."
With this technique, doctors performing heart valve replacements and other complicated procedures through small, so-called keyhole openings, rather than through the usual 7-inch incision.
The new procedure is preferred because it means swifter recovery -- often twice as fast as the standard.
Multiple coronary bypass is on the growing list of heart surgeries being done this way by New York University surgeons.
"I'm tremendously encouraged that the results so far have been excellent," said NYU's Dr. Stephen Colvin. "All the patients that have had valve surgery have done extremely well. All the patients that have had coronary bypasses are doing very, very well."
Colvin stops the heart during the operation. A heart-lung machine is used to keep the patient alive.
Ordinarily, numerous tubes are placed through a massive chest incision the surgeon uses to reach the heart. But with keyhole surgery the bypass tubes are snaked through blood vessels in the groin that lead to the heart.
Three or four small cuts in the chest provide access to the heart and serve as ports for the instruments used to repair it.
"We're coming from the side door of the house rather than coming in from the front door, and we're able to get directly to where we want," Colvin said.
Related story:
- Doctors' techniques help heart patients recover faster - April 26, 1996
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