Aortic valve replacement through a right minithoracotomy

Minimally-invasive operative techniques have many advantages, such as less postoperative pain, lower morbidity and mortality, faster recovery, and shorter duration of operation and hospital stay, associated with lower costs. Minimally invasive cardiac surgery has been developed to offer patients the benefits of open heart operations with decreased pain and limited skin incision. It has been popularized as an alternative to the conventional median sternotomy approach. These techniques require some dedicated skills and experience from surgeons, anesthetists, and perfusionists for a successful result. In this article we demonstrate our surgical approach for aortic valve replacement through a right minithoracotomy.