Mastering the Learning Curve for Robotic-Assisted Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery

In this single-center expert series of 1000 robotic-assisted left internal mammary artery harvest and off-pump anastomosis to the left anterior descending coronary artery through a 4 cm thoracotomy, 30 day mortality was 0.6 percent, stroke occurred in 5 patients (5 percent), and postoperative graft patency was 97.2 percent (491 of 505). The authors report that between 250 and 500 cases were required to acquire “mastery.”