First robot assisted heart surgery in Sweden
Robot operated on his heart: Sweden’s first robot-assisted heart valve surgery was performed at Lund University Hospital. A team of nine people performed the surgery with the assistance of the robot da Vinci. “At first I got a bit worried when I heard ‘robot’,” says Mikael Persson, the patient who is also a wrestler and wrestling coach.

“But after they explained it to me, I felt comfortable.” During the surgery, the arms of the robot are put inside the patient’s body through small holes. The surgeon sits nearby with a control console, with which he steers the robot’s camera and three working arms. “You get a 3-dimensional view, which means we see very well. We also get better mobility than before,” says Johan Sjögren, physician. The standard way in how this type of surgery is conducted is to open the entire rib cage, which increases the time for care and rehabilitation and the risk for infected wounds. The clinic in Lund is already the only one of its kind in Sweden, where it’s been routine to use keyhole surgery. The robot is now an extension of that. “We can really do great things with this,” says Per Wierup, physician. “Complicated surgeries are more easily performed.”