ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The days of long, painful recovery from mitral valve replacement could be a thing of the past following a successful operation performed by a robot surgeon.

On Aug. 14, 2007, at The Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, surgeons used the daVinci robot to successfully repair the mitral valve of a 62-year-old man using a technique known as the "American Correction." The precise movements and tiny instruments of the robot allow the surgery to be minimally invasive -- the standard procedure is to open the chest cavity -- allowing for a faster, less painful recovery, according to surgeon Gerald Lawrie, M.D.

Dr. Lawrie controlled the daVinvi robot during the operation. The ergonomic design allowed the surgeon to operate in a seated position with eyes and hands in line with the instruments. A tiny camera attached to one of the robotic arms gave the doctor a 3-D, 10-times magnified view of the operating field, giving him a view of tissue and organs his human eyes could never see.

Four small incisions along the right side of the chest allow the robot to slip its instruments into the chest cavity. "The main benefits are that they just have these little quarter-to one-half-inch incisions -- three or four little nicks -- in their right armpit," Dr. Lawrie told Ivanhoe. "For women, it's wonderful cosmetically because you can't tell they've had surgery. For men, it's a very small set of incisions."

With the help of the tiny camera, the entire surgery is performed inside the closed chest. This leaves the patient with less scarring, fewer wound complications and gets him back to normal activity within a week of surgery, said Dr. Lawrie. The procedure takes longer to perform than the traditional, human-run surgery, but he said the difference is small. The traditional surgery lasts 70 to 80 minutes; the robot procedure lasts 120 to 130 minutes.

Dr. Lawrie said this surgery technique is the wave of the future. "For mitral valve, this [technique] is going to take over the majority of the patients as more surgeons get trained in it," he said.

SOURCE: Ivanhoe interview with Gerald Lawrie, M.D.