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SATURDAY MARCH 27 | SUNDAY MARCH 28 2021
SUNDAY BREAKFAST
Stage is set for theater groundbreaking at Loyola Academy, thanks to a multimillion-dollar gift from the Leemputte family P18
WEEKEND WEATHER
Saturday, Mostly cloudy, occasional rain, high 53 Saturday night, Low 38 Sunday, Mostly sunny, high 51
LIFESTYLE & ARTS
Wine tasting for a cause P14 FOLLOW US:
NO. 441 | A JWC MEDIA PUBLICATION
HEALING HEARTS A WINNETKA DOCTOR'S COMMITMENT TO NON-INVASIVE HEART SURGERY HAS LED HIM TO BECOME ONE OF THE TOP ROBOTIC HEART SURGEONS IN THE WORLD. BY MITCH HURST THE NORTH SHORE WEEKEND
Dr. Husam Balkhy’s fascination with the human heart began with seeing one in person. “I was always an overachiever in high school and was able to actually observe a cardiac surgery at the latter part of my performative education,” says Balkhy, explaining that this life-changing experience happened toward the end of his high school years in Saudi Arabia. “I felt that the heart was an amazing organ, and for somebody to be able to operate on it, it just blew my mind. At a young age it became my goal.” The Winnetka surgeon’s family immigrated to the United States when he was young, then moved back to Saudi Arabia during high school when his academic father took a post at a university. He went to medical school in Saudi Arabia with the goal of becoming a heart surgeon and moved back to the United States to continue his medical training. It was during his surgical training at Tufts University New England Medical Center in the early ‘90s that he became convinced that non-invasive surgery was the preferred approach—regardless of medical specialty or the organ that needed to be operated on.
“I was lucky enough to do my surgical training in Boston and I trained in general surgery, vascular surgery, and cardiac surgery,” he says. “It was at the time when surgeons started understanding that the trauma that is inflicted on a patient by surgery sometimes overshadows the perceived benefit of the operation that we're conducting.” Balkhy says most heart surgeons still conduct surgeries the traditional way, where the sternum is sawed in half, because the heart is a much more complex and difficult organ. Many surgeons feel a big cut is required because that’s just the price of doing business. “That state of mind didn't appeal to me because I was seeing long recovery times, and some people getting infections in their sternal incisions,” Balkhy says. “There’s a saying that ‘big surgeons make big incisions,’ and in my mind, the smaller the incision the better the surgeon. It may be a little harder on me and harder on the team, but let’s make it easier on the patients because they're the ones who need to go through the recovery.” One of the criticisms of non-invasive surgery is that it takes too long, but what Dr. Balkhy tells junior surgeons and medical students in training is that the patient Continued on PG 9
Dr. Husam Balkhy of University of Chicago Hospital champions the benefits of robotic heart surgery.
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