LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A team of researchers working at Jewish Hospital helped develop a new technique for heart surgery that may result in less pain and shorter hospital stays for patients.
The researchers used a new pump to infuse a just-approved local anesthetic into the area of the incision.
"We are as excited about this study as any we've done, because of the number of people it will help," said the study's leader, Dr. Rob Dowling, a professor of surgery at the University of Louisville.
If the procedure is widely used, it could save $1.4 billion a year in the United States by shortening hospital stays, the researchers said Tuesday.
Surgeons in the U.S. perform more than 750,000 heart operations a year. Post-surgical pain is a major problem - not only because of the pain but also because it can lead to a variety of complications. Among them are difficulty breathing and pneumonia.
The study was published this week in the December issue of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. It will be featured in the December issue of Reader's Digest.
Also involved in the study were doctors from Medical Center Anesthesiologists of Louisville and the I-Flow Corp. of Lake Forest, Calif., which developed the pump.
The study followed 35 patients who had open-heart surgery at Jewish Hospital. Each had two small catheters implanted near their incisions. The catheters were attached to the small, portable pump, known as the ON-Q Post-Operative Pain Relief System.
After surgery, some of the patients received the non-narcotic anesthetic ropivacaine, while others got a placebo of saline solution. Those who received the anesthetic required much less of a standard narcotic painkiller after surgery than those who got the placebo.
They also experienced less post-surgical pain, as measured by a standard scoring technique.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved ropivacaine and the pump. The researchers said hospital costs for the treated group were 8 percent lower than for the untreated group because they went home sooner.
Using the average cost of $24,000 for a heart bypass, that means $1.4 billion could be saved each year in the United States for heart surgery, the researchers concluded.
Dowling, also known for his role in implanting the AbioCor artificial heart in several patients, said he hoped the pain-reducing technique would soon find widespread use.
"Hopefully we'll be helping tens of thousands of patients this year or next," he said.
