MY RELATIONSHIP TO DA VINCI SURGERY: Patient

MY CONDITION: Other Cardiac Condition

TYPE OF PROCEDURE I HAD: da Vinci Cardiac revascularization

HOSPITAL WHERE MY PROCEDURE WAS PERFORMED: USC University Hospital

OTHER TREATMENTS I CONSIDERED BEFORE DA VINCI SURGERY:
My doctor came in and said, "Here's your options: we can do nothing and medicate you, but because you had no symptoms on the treadmill and you ran so far, your first symptom will very likely be sudden death."? I said, "Well, let's take that option off the table." He said, "You can have open heart surgery, traditional bypass open heart surgery. You can re-think your decision about having the stent. Or, there's a new surgery that's being performed right now, a minimally-invasive surgery that's being done with a robot. They don't open you up in the middle and expose the whole inside of your chest"? So I said, "Well, I'm interested in that."? So I called (my doctor's) office and made an appointment, and my wife and I went up and sat in his office. He looked at me and he said, "I have to say I would have had a problem putting a stent in where your lesion was." And he said, "You are a candidate for this surgery if you want to move forward." And I really didn't hesitate. I said, I want to move forward."

THE BIGGEST CONCERNS I HAD ABOUT TREATMENT:
I wanted something that would be permanent, as permanent as those things can get. I didn't want to have to worry about going back in, because in the work that I do that can't be in the back of my head. And open heart surgery would have been my option had this not been available to me.

MY PAIN AND/OR DISCOMFORT LEVEL:
Nothing in the incision area, nothing about the surgery. I never had a problem with those (post-operative) issues the entire time I was recovering in the hospital.

WHEN I RETURNED TO NORMAL ACTIVITIES:
When I went back to work, my biggest problem was my students eye-balling me. They kept looking at me, wondering, "Should (he) being doing this? Aren't you working too hard?"? Most of them would come up after class and tell me, "You're working way too hard. You shouldn't be doing this."? But I honestly felt great. I felt as good as I had before. I've had no problems since I've been back to work.

I WOULD RECOMMEND DA VINCI SURGERY TO MY FRIENDS OR FAMILY MEMBERS!

Robotic surgery, minimally-invasive surgery, was perfect for me for a couple of reasons: it fixed the problem in a way that seemed to be more permanent and sure than a stent, it addressed an issue that may have been life-threatening, and it gave me a different option than full open heart surgery, which as I said before would have been my choice. But it seemed to me that this would give me a quicker recovery time, it would be easier on my body. So for all those reasons this was a surgery that seemed to be a perfect match for me, and as it turned out I think it was. I don't think any of the other choices would have been as good as this one was for me.