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The Heart Center, located at Mercy Hospital, is an expanded cardiovascular services program. It provides seamless delivery of care – from pre-admission testing, to treatment, to care after discharge.
The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) ranked Mercy Hospital's heart surgery program as among the best in the nation by awarding its three-star national quality rating – the highest possible score – for 2010.
Watch our physician videos to meet some of Catholic Health's cardiac physicians. You'll hear them discuss treatment options available, including minimally invasive surgery.
Cardiologists at the Heart Center use state-of-the-art techniques and equipment to offer robotic-assisted and minimally invasive coronary artery bypass surgery and valve replacement surgeries.
“Minimally invasive cardiac surgery has significant benefits for the patient,” explained Mercy Hospital cardiothoracic surgeon Serrie C. Lico, M.D. “Besides less pain, minimal scarring, and less risk of infection or complications, recovery time is much quicker, allowing patients to return to normal activities such as driving a car a week after surgery compared to a month or more following traditional open heart surgery.”
Listen to Dr. John Bell-Thomson discuss minimally-invasive surgery on 96.1 WJYE-FM. As a guest on the radio station's 30-minute Spotlight on Health program, Dr. Bell-Thomson describes how robotic surgery is performed, the teamwork involved and who is a candidate for a minimally invasive approach.
Robert Guiffreda underwent heart surgery in October 2009.
Minimally invasive surgery left him with only a 7 cm scar under his left chest and he had little pain after the procedure.
"My surgery was on Wednesday, I was discharged on Saturday and by Sunday I was up walking around my home,” he recalled. “And, by the following Tuesday, I was walking up and down the road outside my house.”
“I am so grateful and impressed with the care I received at Mercy,” emphasized Guiffreda.
“I can’t say enough about Dr. Lico, the one-on-one care in the Open Heart Unit, the caring staff of the 7 McAuley West Unit, and everybody I encountered during my hospital stay.”
West Seneca resident Gary Kelchlin said when he first learned he might need surgery to repair his heart’s mitral valve after a heart attack, robotic-assisted surgery was not even in the picture.
“At that time, I was looking at conventional open heart surgery or a more minimally invasive approach using clips that was available in Cleveland,” he said.
After meeting with Dr. Bell-Thomson, however, Kelchlin learned that an advanced minimally invasive robotic procedure was a newly available option at Mercy Hospital. “I just didn’t want a big scar and the months of recovery with the open chest surgery,” he said. “After listening to Dr. Bell-Thomson, I had complete confidence in him and decided to have the robotic surgery right here in Buffalo.”
Kelchlin, a retired greens keeper for the City of Buffalo, became the first patient in Western New York to undergo a robotic-assisted mitral valve repair. Within a month, he was back to his normal activities. He described his experience as “amazing” and his entire healthcare team as “even more amazing.”
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