Papers
46
Total Citations
1,750
H-Index
23
About
Thomas Schachner is a pioneering cardiac surgeon whose work has fundamentally advanced the field of minimally invasive and robotic heart surgery. Based at a leading European cardiac center, Schachner has dedicated his career to developing, refining, and validating totally endoscopic coronary artery bypass grafting (TECAB) using robotic technology — a technically demanding approach that eliminates the need for traditional open-chest surgery. His most celebrated contribution is his landmark analysis of five hundred robotic TECAB cases, which garnered 150 citations and established critical benchmarks for procedural safety and success. Alongside this, his early work documenting program development and learning curves (139 citations) provided an essential roadmap for institutions worldwide seeking to adopt robotic cardiac surgery. Schachner also demonstrated that these techniques meaningfully improve patient quality of life and recovery times compared to conventional bypass surgery. Beyond coronary revascularization, he extended robotic endoscopic methods to atrial septal defect repair and pioneered simultaneous hybrid coronary revascularization — combining robotic bypass with stenting in a single session. With a body of work accumulating over 1,000 citations, Schachner's research has been instrumental in legitimizing robotic cardiac surgery as a safe, reproducible, and patient-centered alternative to open-heart procedures.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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- 7Robotically Assisted Totally Endoscopic Coronary Bypass Surgery86 citations · 2011
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