Motion Compensating Software for Heart Surgery
In 1953, Ceclia Bavolek was the first patient to have open heart surgery using the heart-lung bypass machine John Gibbon invented sixteen years earlier. While this invention allowed surgeries that were impossible earlier, patients had increased risk of brain damage. Now, researchers at Harvard and Children’s Hospital of Boston are developing a robotic system for repairing the mitral valve without stopping the heart, or even opening it. A needle places small anchors around the valve, and a suture wire narrows the opening. Software predicts the position of the heart 70 to 100 milliseconds before its motion, allowing the surgeon a literal “stitch in time.” At Case Western Reserve University, surgeons are contemplating a similar motion-compensating approach for coronary artery bypasses. MORE