How to Choose the Best Place for Care

Podcast Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to Love Your Heart, brought to you by Cleveland Clinic's Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute. These podcasts will help you learn more about your heart, thoracic and vascular systems, ways to stay healthy and information about diseases and treatment options. Enjoy.

Marc Gillinov, MD:

I'm Dr. Marc Gillinov, Chairman of the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. Heart surgery is a major event in your life. I do heart surgery every day, and I've had family members who've actually had heart surgery, and I recognize that many questions arise. You have questions about the procedure itself. Can you repair my valve? Will you replace my valve? You have questions about the preparation. Is there anything special I should do? Is there a diet I should be on? And many people have a lot of questions about the recovery. Will I be able to walk up and down stairs? When can I drive again? Is there anything I can do that's going to hurt my heart or conversely, help my heart? Everyone's got questions, and what we've got for you is answers.

At Cleveland Clinic, we have completed more than 10,000 mitral valve repairs for people with mitral valve prolapse. In the last 4,000 cases, we've had 100% survival and a repair rate of more than 99%. Mitral valve repair is a complex cardiac surgical procedure. Many patients want to have robotic surgery because it's a smaller incision and a much quicker recovery. We often hear a great deal of questions about robotic surgery. One question is, do all surgeons do robotic valve or robotic heart surgery? And the answer is no. It's a subspecialty within cardiac surgery. It requires additional training, and thereafter, it requires that the surgeon be in a program that has a high volume, because this is a skill that really needs to be maintained by using it every week, every couple of days. We're very fortunate here at Cleveland Clinic we are well beyond our learning curve, although always striving for perfection.

If you're told you need mitral valve surgery or mitral valve surgery with another procedure and you are thinking about robotic surgery, you need to ask the surgeon a few questions. The first question is, am I a candidate for robotic surgery? Meaning, is this an operation that can be done with the robot such that you fix my heart just as well, but you slip in there with small incisions and quicker recovery? Not all procedures can be performed with a surgical robot. The surgical robot is an incredibly sophisticated high-tech tool, but like any tool, it has to match the job that needs to be done.

If you are a candidate for robotic surgery, then the next question is who should it? So you need to find somebody with expertise. And of course, you can go to our website, Cleveland Clinic, and see our surgical teams that do robotic surgery, that have a lot of experience with great results. Many patients travel for this surgery because again, it is extremely specialized and it's certainly worth your while to determine whether or not you're a candidate for surgery and then to decide where should I go for my surgery based on the experience, the expertise, and the results of the surgeons that you are considering.

We are proud of our team of cardiac care specialists at the Cleveland Clinic. We are the largest cardiac surgery program in North America, and we have the best results across the spectrum of cardiovascular conditions and diseases. We have state-of-the-art technology, some of which was even invented here at the Cleveland Clinic, but more important, we have the world's best teams. In addition, our nurses, nurse practitioners, technicians, perfusionists who run the heart lung machine, are all highly specialized, super skilled, carefully chosen, such that you will get the best possible team to deliver an outstanding outcome. So when I chose Cleveland Clinic for my family members before I arrived here, I chose it because of the people who were able to take care of my family members. And that is the most important thing. We have the best people, the most dedicated individuals, and we come together to deliver for you the best outcome.

Announcer:

Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed the podcast. We welcome your comments and feedback. Please contact us at heart@ccf.org. Like what you heard? Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, or listen at clevelandclinic.org/loveyourheartpodcast.