St. Cloud (Minn.) Hospital recently became the first in the world to remove a heart tumor without open heart surgery, KNSI Radio reported July 29.
A heart and vascular team from CentraCare Health used hologram technology to guide them to the tumor and used a catheter to suction it out in the operation that took around 20 minutes.
"This is going to change our standard of care in a pretty quantum leap," Wade Schmidt, MD, chief of cardiology and director of the hospital's peripheral vascular program, told KNSI Radio. "We now have the experience and the technology to treat a whole different population of patients."