The cardiac surgery suite at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center looks much like it always has: the same scrubbed-in staff, the same sterile precision, the same high stakes. But in August, something changed. A new presence joined the team—one that doesn’t wear scrubs and doesn’t take breaks. A surgical robot, operated by human hands but guided by decades of technological refinement, made its debut at New Hampshire’s flagship academic medical center.
The procedure was a mitral valve repair, a surgery that sits at the intersection of routine and extraordinarily delicate. The mitral valve, the gatekeeper between the upper and lower left chambers of the heart, fails slowly. When it leaks—when blood seeps backward instead of pushing forward—the heart compensates for years, working harder, growing larger, until one day it can’t anymore. Left untreated, the damage becomes permanent. The heart fails.
For patients facing this reality, the statistics nationwide offer little comfort. Mitral valve repair, when possible, is preferred over replacement. But the surgery succeeds only 60 to 70 percent of the time across the country. At Dartmouth Hitchcock, the numbers tell a different story. Dr. Henry J. Tannous, the section chief of cardiac surgery, puts it simply: “We are one of the top academic medical centers in the United States for mitral valve repair with a success rate greater than 95 percent.”
Now that expertise has been paired with a tool that changes how the surgery is performed. The robotic system allows surgeons to operate through small incisions rather than splitting the sternum open. The robot doesn’t replace the surgeon’s judgment—it extends their reach, translating hand movements into precise instrument control inside the chest cavity. For patients, the difference is measured in recovery time. The first patient to undergo the procedure at Dartmouth Hitchcock was home in less than a week.
The technology itself has been two decades in the making. Developed over twenty years, robotic mitral valve repair only became viable for widespread patient use in the last five. Bringing it to northern New England required more than purchasing equipment. Tannous and his team spent a full year preparing, traveling to established programs in Atlanta, Manhattan, and Los Angeles to observe colleagues who had already integrated the robot into their practice.
The timing aligned with another addition to the team. Dr. Jose R. Rodriguez, a cardiac surgeon who joined Dartmouth Hitchcock this summer, arrived with prior experience using the system. Tannous saw the fit immediately. “The fact that we had the whole team getting ready before his arrival made Dr. Rodriguez a perfect match,” he said. Tannous himself had worked with the robot previously at Stony Brook University.
The achievement places Dartmouth Hitchcock in select company. The medical center is now the first hospital on the East Coast north of Boston to offer the procedure—a geographic distinction that matters for patients who might otherwise face long journeys to major metropolitan centers for advanced cardiac care.
The robotic program arrives as Dartmouth Hitchcock continues to accumulate recognition. U.S. News & World Report recently named the medical center a Best Hospital for 2025-2026, ranking it number one in New Hampshire and recognizing it in fifteen adult procedures and conditions, up from the previous year. The medical center remains the state’s only Level 1 trauma center and its only academic medical center.
For the cardiac surgery team, the robot represents a continuation of what they were already doing—just through a different means. The goal remains repair over replacement, preserving the patient’s own valve whenever possible. The tool has changed. The standard has not.