The most advanced method used to perform open heart surgery means a quicker recovery time and less postoperative risks. However, very few doctors use the technique.
The term port access refers to a technique that allows doctors to put a patient on a heart lung machine, stop the heart, and protect it, all done through catheters placed in the groin and the neck. The problem is, in spite of the fact it’s safer and more effective, doctors don’t learn how to perform it, which means it’s widely underused.

The most advanced method used to perform cardiac bypass surgery is port access. Though it means a quicker recovery time and less postoperative risks, very few doctors use the technique.
The term port access refers to a technique that allows doctors to put a patient on a heart lung machine, stop the heart, and protect it, all done through catheters placed in the groin and the neck. The problem is, in spite of the fact it’s safer and more effective, doctors don’t learn how to perform it, which means it’s widely underused.

In spite of the fact he could chase around his six month old son, at the age of 41 James Miller was told he would need open heart surgery to correct a defect in one of his heart valves. “I really shouldn’t have been able to take ten steps without having to pause and take a breathe,” says James.

Traditional surgery would require a huge incision in the midline of his chest. “With my job and everything else I didn’t have ten to twelve weeks to recover form surgery,” James recalls. But James had a quick recovery. His cardiac surgery was done using port access. Instead of making a huge incision in the middle of the chest, doctors are able to make small incisions in the side, under the armpit: the port. Catheters placed into the neck and groin carry blood from the body into the bypass machine and feed that blood back to the patient. Chemicals which stop the heart from beating are infused through a catheter as well. The surgeon can now operate using robotic arms through the tiny incision.

Dr. Douglas Murphy, the Chief of Cardiac Surgery at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta, says, “The mitral valve is more in its normal state if you come in from the side of the chest you don’t’ distort it as much so we’re actually better at repairing valve than if we use a large incision in the front.”

With the technique there’s a lesser chance that an air bubble or a piece of fat will get into the artery travel to the brain and cause a stroke. Also, because the wound is much smaller, there’s less pain less risk of infection and a quicker recovery time. “The recover is soft tissue recovery only there’s no bone that has to heal,” says Dr. Murphy.

Yet, roughly only ten percent of cardiac bypass surgeries, in New York and other cities, that could be done using port access are performed in this manner. The problem, according to Dr. Murphy, is that physicians haven’t chosen to learn the technique. “Medicine is like a big battle ship: it turns slowly. As the benefits of this become known to physicians and known to patients it will continue to grow,” Murphy believes.

James has only these small scars to show after his cardiac surgery…but most important to him was his ability to get back to being a dad. “I was getting back to being able to take care of him in 3 t0 4 weeks,” James says of his son.

Dr. Murphy says repair of the mitral valve is practically 100 percent in his hospital because of the ability to see the surgical field so well.

You can find a doctor who performs the procedure by logging on to www.allaboutmyheart.com.

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