Baker 1

Annotated Bibliography

How is Cardiac Surgery Evolving with Modern Technology?

Tabitha Baker

Professor Malcolm Campbell

UWRT 1103

05 October, 2019
 Baker 2

Annotated Bibliography

ahajournals.org. AHA/ASA Journals. American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.

Accessed 21 Sep 2019.

This website is a home for medical journals from the American Heart Association and the

American Stroke Association. These journals publish articles relative to enhancing

cardiovascular health, on par with the American Heart Association’s mission statement:

“To be a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives.” Some journals include

Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (ATVB), Circulation, Hypertension,

and Journal of the American Heart Association. These journals are issued monthly and

cover an extreme variety of topics concerning the human heart and, on the ASA side,

strokes. The journals that are particular to my research are Circulation, Circulation:

Cardiovascular Imaging, and Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, as

these concern the latest research on medical advances involving the heart. As this website

is run by the American Heart Association, a non-profit organization that funds

cardiovascular research for the medical field. This website can reach a variety of different

audiences: certified doctors, medical students, or just the general public; basically,

anyone wanting to be up to date on the latest cardiovascular and stroke research.

Compared with my other sources in this bibliography, this website is a broadened version

of my academic journal, “Robotic Cardiac Surgery: The Future Gold Standard or AN

Unnecessary Extravagance?” by Amer Harky and Syed Muhammad Asim Hussain,

which would fit well on this website. This source is extremely helpful for my research, as

I can find recent research easily, as well as articles concerning the history of the medical

field. There are several articles that will be used in my project from the journals on this
 Baker 3

website, as they include vital information for my topic of inquiry, such as articles on the

history and future of cardiac surgery.

Harky, Amer and Hussain, Syed Muhammad Asim. “Robotic Cardiac Surgery: The Future Gold

Standard or An Unnecessary Extravagance?” Brazilian Journal of Cardiovascular

Surgery, vol. 34, no. 4, Aug. 2019, pp. XII-XIII, doi: 10.21470/1678-9741-2019-0194.

Accessed 04 Oct 2019.

This academic article presents the positive and negative effects of robotic cardiac

surgery. Many positives are listed, such as a quicker recovery time, earlier hospital

discharge, and less pain and bleeding. In addition, technical advantages such as

ambidexterity, the absence of tremor from surgeons, and increased visualization through

three-dimensional (3-D) imaging. However, many negatives are presented as well,

including high initial pricing and maintenance costs, and an extremely steep learning

curve. An operator must complete 150-250 procedures in order to be adept. The article

goes on to say that hospital costs would be balanced out by the decreased length of

patient stay post-surgery. Additionally, more robots could be produced in the future that

are easier to operate, which could decrease the learning curve. The article also presents a

study done on robotic mitral surgery, an operation involving the heart valve between the

left atrium and the left ventricle. In comparison with non-robotic approaches, there were

only two differences: less atrial fibrillation (dangerously irregular heartbeat) and pleural

effusion (commonly referred to as “water on the lungs”) in the robotic group, but a longer

cardiopulmonary bypass time, where function of the heart and lungs is taken over, was

also present in the robotic group. The authors, Amer Harky, a Specialty Trainee, and
 Baker 4

Syed Mohammad Asim Hussain, a Surgical SHO, both of whom are with the Department

of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital, are objective due to

their equal presentation of positive and negative effects of robotic cardiovascular surgery.

Compared to my other sources, due to being written by medical professionals, this article

is similar to what is found on the American Heart Association website and is more in-

depth than the news article that I evaluated from CNBC. This source was helpful

concerning the pros and cons of my topic of inquiry. I am now more knowledgeable

about both sides of the argument concerning robotic surgery. It did broaden my

perspective on this topic. I will use this source in my project because it presents unbiased

information on the positive and negative effects of robotic cardiac surgery.

Soon, Stella. “Robotics can help doctors perform heart surgery remotely.” CNBC. 02 Oct 2019.

cnbc.com/2019/10/03/robots-can-help-doctors-perform-heart-surgery-remotely.html.

Accessed 04 Oct 2019.

In this news article, five patients suffering from coronary artery disease were operated on

with the help of a robot in India. The surgeon over the operation was 20 miles away. The

patients’ disease is a condition in which damaged blood vessels cause the heart to receive

an inadequate amount of blood. This surgery allowed the doctor to put a structure in the

blood vessel of the patients and open it up, after which the blood can flow through. These

operations were entirely successful and give hope for future remote operations. These

would help patients who do not have the ability to acquire medical services for heart

disease, such as patients in less-developed countries. This technology could be helpful

 Baker 5

when the expertise for this field is unavailable. The article also lists several other positive

effects of this technology, such as reduced exposure to radiation and reduced injury for

medical practitioners. The author, Stella Soon, is a CNBC contributor out of the Asia

Pacific headquarters in Singapore. She is simply presenting facts published in a study

from The Lancet’s EClinicalMedicine, a medical journal. The purpose of this news article

is to inform the general public of successful advances in the medical field. The author

lists many sources, among them Apex Heart Institute’s cardiologists Tejas Patel and

Sanjay Shah, which gives the news article the impression of a reliable source. Compared

with my other sources, this source presents one specific situation, while the others are on

a broader plane, but this source seems equally as reliable as the others. This article was

extremely helpful in researching how robotics are affecting cardiac surgery today,

especially as this article was published on October 2, 2019, so it is very recent. This gives

me a larger understanding of the growing scope of robotics in the surgical field. This

source will appear in my project because it strikes me as an important milestone for

cardiac surgery and it aids my research for modern technology within cardiac surgery.