The city has become the only one in the country to offer vascular robotic surgery in interventional cardiology. Dr Tejas Patel interventional cardiologist with the Apex Heart Institute on Thursday claimed that the hospital was the only one to have carried out coronary angioplasty and stenting using vascular robotic technology.

"This system will help further reduce complications that occur during angioplasty and stenting. There is a limit to the precision with which a human hand can operate. The precision is limited to 5mm to 10mm while in the case of a robot the accuracy is as minute as 1mm when doing angioplasty and stenting," said Patel who has also been conferred with the Padma Shri.

He added that Ahmedabad was the only city outside of US to make use of the technology. The hospital has within a span of less than a year carried out over 57 angioplasty and stenting using the new technology. "Of the 57 cases, only in 5 cases did we have to take over the procedure manually," said Dr Patel.

Explaining as to why robotic surgery came late to cardiovascular operations, Dr Patel said it was because it was the only field that involved operating on an organ that was not static.

"Every other part you operate on is static but the heart is not and hence one needs to be very careful. This is why robotic surgery came late here than other field of medicine," said Dr Patel.He said the robotic surgery was at present being offered for gratis to patients at the hospital but it would cost an additional Rs55,000 on top of what an angioplasty would cost. He said the procedure lasts 10 to 25 minutes.

The hospital also plans to offer robotic surgery training for angioplasty and stenting to other doctors from India as well as across the world.

Dr Patel said he will also be participating in Mayo Clinic's experimental tele stenting. Mayo Clinic is a medical practice and research group based in Rochester, Minnesota, USA. Tele stenting refers to the process of stenting from far.

"This experiment at present is being carried out on animals. In this with the help of a robot, a doctor sitting 50o mts away will carry out stenting in an animal. I am sure that five years from now we will be able to do a similar process for humans. A doctor need not be close to a patient to operate on," said Dr Patel. He said in the future this will also help address India's problem of shortage of super specialists in remote areas.