Minimally invasive cardiac surgery using port-access method

From October 1997 to January 2006, we operated on 209 patients with port-access cardiac surgery. The patients were 116 with atrial septal defect (ASD), 85 with mitral valve disease, 2 with coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), 10 with other (ventricular septal defect, partial endocardial fusion defect, myxoma). The average of postoperative hospital stay is 7 (shortest: 3) days. None of these patient have been readmitted, however, there was 1 mortality. The operative technique for ASD is established in this series. On the other hand, for mitral valve disease, a modification point such as prevention of a complication and shortening of cardiopulmonary bypass time were recognized. It seemed that careful determination of operative indication and establishment of security were important. Improvement and development of operative technology of port-access method will enable future safe total endoscopic or robotic cardiac surgery. In this paper, we report the latest surgical technique of port-access cardiac surgery.