In a major surgical innovation, doctors at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center in Houston performed the first fully robotic heart transplant in the United States that did not require a traditional sternotomy (cutting through the breastbone). Instead of a large chest incision, surgeons made small incisions through the preperitoneal space in the abdomen and used a surgical robot to remove the failing heart and implant a donor heart. This minimally invasive approach could lead to less pain, faster recovery, and reduced complications for patients. While this was the first such procedure in the U.S., it’s worth noting that a fully robotic heart transplant without opening the chest had already been performed earlier in Saudi Arabia.
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