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Dr Joseph Galichia
Joseph P. Galichia, MD is the founder and Medical Director of the Galichia Medical Group, PA. He is an internationally recognized pioneer in the field of interventional cardiology. In the 70's, Dr. Galichia studied in Zurich, Switzerland with the inventors of the balloon angioplasty technique for treating heart disease. As a result of his experience, he was able to bring this historic technique back to the United States where he was one of the first physicians to perform coronary angioplasty here. A noted medical spokesman, he appears on a weekly Newstalk segment on KWCH Channel 12 and has a weekly syndicated radio talk show on KNSS 1330 AM every Saturday live from 11:00 am to noon. Dr. Galichia may be contacted by sending an e-mail to service@galichia.com
Health & Medicine
2003-02-01 15:30:00
Heart bypass surgery
ANSWER:  Coronary bypass surgery is most commonly done by a sternal splitting procedure and the putting the patient on a machine, which does the work of the heart while the surgeon performs the bypass procedure.  Recent efforts have been made to reduce the extent of the surgery and cause less trauma to the body.  "Beating heart" surgery and more recently robotic surgery attempt to address the problem."Beating heart" procedures can be done without putting the patient on a bypass machine and is now being performed in about 15% of cases in many centers.  This cuts down on the time of the procedure and in most cases reduces the risk with a lesser amount of recovery time.  Nevertheless, there are many patients who are not candidates for this type of procedure.  The use of this technique is growing.A new frontier is emerging with the use of robotics.  This approach will enable the surgeon to forego the sternal splitting part of the operation and use a robotic device to place the bypass grafts in the right position.  Many patients can go home in a couple of days and the risk appears to be less.  Again, not all patients are candidates for this procedure and it is not available in more than eight or ten centers in the U.S. today.  Certainly we will see great progress in the next few years in the entire field of robotic surgery.
 
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