Clinical Minutes Series
Andreas Kamlot, MD, outlines the rapidly evolving field of cardiac surgery, including the new generation of valves that reduce stress and improve outcomes.
[MUSIC PLAYING] ANDREAS KAMLOT: My name is Andreas Kamlot. I'm one of the cardiothoracic surgeons at John Muir Health. Cardiac surgery is a very young and rapidly evolving field in medicine. This makes cardiac surgery so very exciting. To improve the outcome in cardiac surgery, we constantly strive to improve our clinical outcome, and reduce the impact and stress on our patients with new treatment options. What comes particularly into our mind is the minimum invasive program at John Muir Health. I'm very excited and passionate about two minimum invasive treatment options in cardiac surgery. At John Muir we perform procedures and operations today which were just an illusion 10 years ago. We have the same cutting edge technology and skills as the major university hospitals in this country. Today at John Muir we can successfully cure patients who are too sick in the past, and did not qualify for any surgical treatment option. There are two broad categories in minimum invasive cardiac surgery, which I'm very passionate about. First is the minimum invasive valve program, and the minimum invasive treatment of atrial fibrillation. Operations which required a major incision in the past, can now be performed successfully through small incisions or even entirely without incisions at all just with catheter based techniques. With a small incision we can now replace heart valves or repair valves in a fraction of the time, which was required in the past. There's a new generation of surgical valves available which can be implanted through many incisions, and is deployed into the heart without the need of suturing. These novel and sophisticated valves anchor themselves and reduce the time in the operating room significantly. Other patients might qualify for catheter based valve implantation that requires no incisions at all. The operation time and stress is significantly reduced, which improves the patient's outcome, returns them back home and back to their normal lives much faster. Also the minimum invasive treatment of atrial fibrillation is one of my main interests. Over three million Americans have atrial fibrillation, which is not treated. We developed the first program at the West Coast, which is a novel technique, which treats atrial fibrillation through one small keyhole incision. I'm proud to say that the success of our minimum invasive program at John Muir Health is possible through the close collaboration with our cardiologist. Never before we worked much closer with our cardiology colleagues than today. We created a comprehensive and very inclusive program. When a patient comes to John Muir, and after cardiac surgery says, hey, that was really not so bad and had an excellent outcome, then I feel we had done a good job. [MUSIC PLAYING]
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