Towards trends in minimal invasive cardiac surgery

While various minimally invasive techniques have been established in many other surgical specialties during the last decades, cardiac surgery has been one of the last domains to adopt the principles of minimally invasive techniques. This was mainly based on the reduced surgical exposure in highly complex cardiac operations and the missing technical requirements in the beginning of the modern cardiac era. Nowadays, technical conditions have continuously improved and have become routine also in cardiac surgery. Most of these novel minimal-invasive concepts have been developed in order to treat high-risk or inoperable patients by reducing operative trauma. Actually, since more high-risk and multimorbid patients were referred for surgery, these initial extraordinary procedures have been adopted into daily clinical routine. Currently, many promising innovations aim to reduce the operative trauma and perioperative morbidity, and furthermore, to increase patients' satisfaction and security. It is anticipated that in the future this current trend towards minimal invasiveness will increase further due to an increased demand, and therefore, such minimal-invasive procedures will become less complex and straightforward.