BACKGROUND It is assumed that a right anterolateral thoracotomy for correction of simple congenital cardiac defects (ie, atrial septal defect) achieves more favorable cosmetic results than a standard median sternotomy. METHODS Ninety-five patients, 72 with right anterolateral thoracotomy and 23 with median sternotomy, who had corrective transatrial operations when they were younger than 12 ye...

BACKGROUND Although median sternotomy is standard during cardiac surgery, the procedure is associated with a risk of injury to mediastinal organs. Here, we discuss two cases of tracheal injury following median sternotomy during cardiac surgery. CASE PRESENTATION Ventilation failure occurred in a 78-year-old Japanese man and a 71-year-old Japanese man after median sternotomy, and tracheal inju...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Adequate analgesia after sternotomy reduces postoperative adverse events. There are various methods of treating pain after heart surgery, such as infiltration with a local anesthetic, nerve block, opioids, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, alpha-adrenergic agents, intrathecal and epidural techniques, and multimodal analgesia. CONTENT A review of the epidemiology,...

Objective To compare clinical and health economic outcomes after manubrium-limited mini-sternotomy (intervention) conventional median sternotomy (usual care). Design A single-blind, randomised controlled trial. Setting Single centre UK National Health Service tertiary hospital. Participants Adult patients undergoing aortic valve replacement (AVR) surgery. Interventions Intervention was performe...

OBJECTIVES The goal of this study was to evaluate percutaneous interventional and minimally invasive surgical closure of secundum atrial septal defect (ASD) in children. BACKGROUND Concern has surrounded abandoning conventional midline sternotomy in favor of the less invasive approaches pursuing a better cosmetic result and a more rational resource utilization. METHODS A retrospective analy...

OBJECTIVES We sought to compare early and late clinical and echocardiographic outcomes of patients undergoing minimally invasive mitral valve repair by means of the port-access and median sternotomy approaches. METHODS Between 2000 and 2009, 503 patients had mitral valve repair, of whom 143 underwent surgical intervention for isolated posterior leaflet pathology: 61 through port access and 82...

Abstract Purpose This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of postoperative exercise capacity SternaLock Blu (Zimmer Biomet, USA) for post-sternotomy patients who underwent cardiovascular surgery. Methods We investigated 116 patients, including 35 women (mean age 70.3 ± 10.0 years), surgery by median sternotomy. Patients were candidate using Blu, such as obesity (body mass index > 30/kg/m 2 ...