Dr. Siddiqui & Rosalyn – Aortic Stenosis

Kathryn Schwalbe, DO:

Some of the surgeries that we offer here in Mason City are what we call minimally invasive. What minimally invasive means is that there are two different current technologies with which we can do that, and that’s using the small incisions to make a big change in somebody’s life. So laparoscopically, the surgeon is at the patient’s bedside. They are using high-tech long sticks with a specific instrument on the end of them that I can control and I look with a camera to see what I’m doing. So you can get really good visualization. You can do a very fine dissection, get exactly in the tissue plane that you want because sometimes, it’s just a cell layer thick.

Taking that one step further is the newer technology, the robotics. And what the robotics do, they still have that camera lens with the magnification, the small incisions, but instead of the surgeon being at the bedside with the instruments, we’re actually at a separate console. So we are right next to the patient still. We are still in the same room, still seeing everything, hearing everything, but our controls are even more present. Because with the laparoscopic, my instruments, they go like this. They’re very single planar. I don’t get to do anything with my wrist. But the benefit from the robotics is now I have an instrument that can move like this and I can get an even better dissection, even more precision, more control with it.