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Ann Thorac Surg 2005;79:490-491
© 2005 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons

INVITED COMMENTARY

Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University, 600 Moye Blvd, Greenville, NC 27858

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Reichenspurner and colleagues have compared two innovative surgical techniques used during 120 video-assisted minimally invasive (MI) mitral valve operations. Either the port-access (Cardiovations, Sommerville, NJ) method using an occluding intraaortic balloon (n = 60) or a simpler transthoracic aortic clamp (Scanlan International, Minneapolis, MN) technique (n = 60) was used. All operations were done through a 6 to 10 cm minithoracotomy with either a two-dimensional or three-dimensional camera, two-thirds of which were guided by AESOP (Intuitive Surgical, Mountain View, CA), a voice-activated robotic-arm assistant. There was no operative mortality and hospital stays were similar for both groups. Repair results were excellent, and met the . . . [Full Text of this Article]