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Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 2004;26:S2-S3
© 2004 Elsevier Science NL

Introduction and Overview

Symposium for the Future of Cardiac Surgery

Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, D-79106 Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

^* Tel.: +49 761 270 2818; fax: +49 761 270 2550 (Email: beyers@ch11.ukl.uni-freiburg.de).

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

1. Why do we need a "Symposium for the Future of Cardiac Surgery?"

The field of cardiac surgery is the speciality in medical therapy that has witnessed unparalleled development and innovation so far.

The very essence of our speciality is pure innovation and creativity, and failure, though nearly omnipresent in the early days, never caused us to stop or slow down the rate at which progress was made. For example, the failures of the first generation of heart-lung-machines did not lead to the abandonment of open-heart surgery. Rather it led to the introduction of ‘cross circulation’, only to return to the heart-lung-machine a few months later with great success from there on.

Within the extremely short period of only 50 years, cardiac surgery was born and achieved developed to a level never imagined before. In addition to many innovations, techniques were steadily improved, and refinements have led to the routine use of these techniques within a very short period of time. Furthermore, new fields have opened from the original congenital diseases to valve and aortic surgery, coronary artery surgery and transplantation . . . [Full Text of this Article]