ABSTRACT
Cardiac surgery as a speciality, perhaps due to the complexity of our procedures, has lagged behind other surgical specialities in the development of minimally invasive methods. In the mid-1990s, however, reports by Drs. Cohn and Cosgrove, as well as others, ignited the interest of cardiac surgeons in minimizing cardiac surgical trauma by reducing the size of incisions and making use of improvements in endoscopic technology.1-7 Minimally invasive cardiac surgery has gone through graded levels of dif culty with variable modi cation of cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) techniques, and gradually increasing reliance on video assistance roboticassisted techniques.
