What makes a surgery “minimally invasive” ?
Traditionally, open-heart surgery is performed with the patient connected to a machine known as the heart-lung machine. The heart -lung machine replaces the function of the patient’s heart and lungs while the operation is performed. The patient’s heart is stopped while we operate on it. Recently, there has been interest in performing heart by-pass surgery without the use of the heart-lung machine. In this instance, the patient’s heart and lung continues to function while the operation is performed. The patient’s anatomy and the type of operation they require determine whether the heart-lung machine is employed. For some time, it was thought that such an approach would allow the operation to be performed through a smaller incision – hence the term, minimally invasive. In fact, most “op-pump” surgery is still being performed through the standard incision through the length of the breastbone.
