Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital
Opens Hybrid Surgical Suites
HOUSTON (August 25, 2005) Physicians of the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital entered a new era of cardiovascular medicine this week when they conducted their first operation in one of two new hybrid surgical suites, designed to combine minimally-invasive percutaneous cardiology and vascular interventions with cardiovascular surgical procedures. The heart center is the first in the region to construct these state-of-the-art surgical suites and the only center in the U.S. to have two. Denton A. Cooley, MD, president and surgeon-in-chief of the Texas Heart Institute at St. Lukes, and Joseph Coselli, MD, chief of Adult Cardiac Surgery, performed the procedure to treat a descending thoracic aortic aneurysm, a dangerous condition in which the body's main blood vessel balloons and is at risk of rupturing.
| Joseph Coselli, MD, and Denton A. Cooley, MD, lead the team performing the first procedure in the new hybrid surgical suites. |
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"There are a lot of instances where combining the best of surgical and interventional procedures could be extremely useful to patients and it hasn't been available until now," said Ross Reul, MD, director of Surgical Innovations. "If we can perform a smaller, less invasive procedure with a combined approach, we will offer patients a better recovery. The idea is for patients to have less pain, recover more quickly, get out of the hospital faster, and get back to their normal, productive lives."
"We have many patients that are in different stages of disease and have multiple illnesses that make them at very high surgical risk. Because they are advanced in their disease process, they may not be suitable for transcatheter interventions. So mixing and matching these procedures at the same times makes perfect sense," said Ali Mortazavi, MD. Dr. Mortazavi is an interventional cardiologist on the professional staff of THI at St. Luke's and he is also chief of Cardiology at Kelsey-Seybold Clinic. "This is a new paradigm in which the surgeons and interventionalists work in the same place, at the same time or in a staged manner, on the same case to achieve the maximum benefit to the patient."
More than a year of planning went into the development of the hybrid O.R. suites that involved the expertise of cardiologists, cardiovascular surgeons, interventional radiologists, peripheral vascular surgeons, anesthesiologists and perfusionists as well as a large nursing and technical support team.
"A wide variety of cases will be applicable to this technology," said Joseph Coselli, MD, chief of Adult Cardiac Surgery at the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's. "With the latest equipment, we have imaging capabilities far beyond anything we've had in the operating room before. It's like taking off sunglasses and being able to see things much, much more clearly. It makes our job easier and it's safer, more efficient and just better care for the patient."
The imaging equipment can easily be moved out of the way when it's not needed by the operator. All imaging and physiologic measurements are displayed on flat-screen monitors which also can be easily positioned around the room as the various specialists work on their aspects of the procedure. The suite also features digital video cameras which can zoom and rotate around the suite and also provide the physician's view of the patient during a procedure. All of this digital information as well as audio from the suites can be broadcast live to the Denton A. Cooley Auditorium or other sites for interactive, educational programs.
| Ross Reul, MD, is shown providing a guided tour of the new hybrid surgical suites in a broadcast to the Denton A. Cooley Auditorium. |
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"It's cutting edge. The teaching capabilities are enormous," said Dr. Coselli.
The hybrid surgical suites also feature the da Vinci surgical robot. An example of a hybrid procedure might include using the robot's minimally invasive tools to harvest the mammary artery for a coronary artery bypass procedure and open other arteries with the percutaneous stenting procedure.
"The robot is an excellent tool to help us enhance minimally invasive procedures. It allows us to do certain parts of the procedure with an endoscope instead of a long incision and allows us to have much better visualization and technical precision than we could with long endoscopic instruments. By combining this technology with percutaneous approaches, we can get a lot of access to the three-dimensional structure of the heart that we couldn't normally get with a small incision alone," said Dr. Reul.
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World-renowned cardiovascular surgeon Denton A. Cooley, MD, founded the Texas Heart Institute in 1962 for the study and treatment of diseases of the heart and blood vessels. Together with the Institute's clinical partner, St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, for the past 15 years it has been ranked among the nation's top ten heart centers in an annual survey published by U.S. News & World Report. For more information about the Institute, please visit www.texasheart.org.
St. Luke's was founded in 1954 by the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. St. Luke's is home to the world-renowned Texas Heart Institute, founded in 1962. In 2001, St. Luke's earned the Magnet designation, the highest honor in patient care. It is the first hospital in Texas and the Southwest to be so honored. For more information about the hospital, please visit www.stlukestexas.com
