Nature Reviews Cardiology, a prominent peer-reviewed journal, published a review of minimally invasive pediatric heart surgery by Emile Bacha, MD, Chief of the Division of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, and David Kalfa, MD, pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian.
In this review, intended for general practitioners and members of multidisciplinary teams caring for children who require heart surgery, Drs. Bacha and Kalfa provide an overview of minimally invasive techniques as they apply to sternal-sparing incisions, video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS), robotically assisted surgery (RAS), hybrid procedures, minimization of the effects of cardiopulmonary bypass, and other specific ‘trauma-sparing’ strategies.
The overarching goal is to teach practitioners how to “treat more while hurting less,” according to the authors.