Pain and the Quality of Life Following Robotic Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery.

OBJECTIVE: Minimally invasive bypass grafting is a promising surgical treatment in proximal LAD stenosis procedures. The main goal of this study was to make comparisons between robotically assisted minimally invasive coronary bypass surgery and conventional surgery in isolated proximal LAD lesions in terms of pain and quality of life improvement.

METHODS: The study contains patients with proximal LAD lesions who were treated with robotically assisted minimally invasive coronary artery bypass surgery and conventional bypass surgery between June 2005 and November 2012. Fifty patients treated with coronary bypass with cardiopulmonary bypass and complete sternotomy were categorized as Group 1. Fifty patients who applied for robotically assisted minimally invasive bypass surgery were categorized as Group 2. The evaluations of pain and quality of life were done according to the Verbal Rating Scale (VRS) and SF-36 health survey questionnaire, respectively.

RESULTS: The conventional bypass group and robotic group had 4.8 ± 1.9 years and 4.3 ± 1.6 years mean follow-up time, respectively. The robotic bypass group had a significantly shorter ICU stay and hospital stay than the conventional bypass group (P < .05). The pain score was higher in the robotic bypass group on the 1st postoperative day (P < .05), but the score on the 4th postoperative day was higher in the conventional bypass group (P < .05). In terms of domains of the SF-36 questionnaire, patient scores were significantly higher in patients who were operated with robotically assisted minimally invasive direct coronary artery bypass (MIDCAB) procedure than in patients who were operated with conventional bypass technique.

CONCLUSION: Patients operated with robotically assisted MIDCAB procedure had results with lesser pain, shorter ICU stay, and shorter hospital stay than the other group in isolated proximal LAD stenosis. The same group also had better quality of life results according to the SF-36 questionnaire results.