What Mary Lou Davis thought was a pulled shoulder muscle turned out to be a life-threatening heart condition — and her survival is nothing short of a medical miracle.
While wintering in the Florida Keys, Davis felt shoulder pain and dismissed it. Days later, she was in an ambulance headed to Miami, needing emergency heart surgery. “It’s a miracle I’m alive,” Davis said. Doctors discovered she had severe coronary artery disease and was on the brink of a heart attack.
Enter Dr. Makoto Hashimoto, a cardiac surgeon at Baptist Health Miami Cardiac and Vascular Institute, who recently arrived from Japan to launch a cutting-edge robotic heart surgery program. Davis became one of his first patients to undergo robotic bypass surgery — performed through just three small incisions, without opening her chest.
What amazed Davis most? Her doctor operated from across the room. “He was at a computer, completely across the room, and I was there on the bed having heart surgery,” she said. “I can’t even fathom the shock of that.”
Dr. Hashimoto sees robotic cardiac surgery as the future. “The number of these procedures is increasing exponentially around the world,” he said, adding that remote surgeries — with doctors operating from other countries — may not be far off.
Davis is now back home, recovering well and urging others to listen to their bodies. “If you feel something unfamiliar, don’t ignore it. I almost didn’t go in.”
Her story is a reminder that what seems minor can be a major warning — and that the future of surgery may already be here.
