In the early days of cardiac surgery, but also in the following four decades, median sternotomy and cardiopulmonary bypass were nearly always included in cardiac surgical procedures. Less invasive surgical techniques were developed with the aim of reducing perioperative trauma without compromising the surgical result, and things became more complex for cardiac surgeons. They now often had to consider the surgical access of choice and whether cardiopulmonary bypass should be used or not.
Since the mid 1990s, not only have several novel minimally invasive surgical techniques been...
In the early days of cardiac surgery, but also in the following four decades, median sternotomy and cardiopulmonary bypass were nearly always inclu...