Surgery without interventions?

Abstract

Cardiac surgeons took to the heart and claimed an exclusive privilege to intervene. The task of cardiologists was to identify "candidates" and feed the Great Surgical Machine. Recently catheter surgery has developed and fell into the hands of cardiologists, who became interventionists. Cardiac surgeons are concerned about losing interventions and their identify. The analysis of the current situation implies a revisitation of old concepts: surgery, intervention, therapy, patients, invasiveness etc ... etc ... and a review of our therapeutic philosophy. Therapeutic plans comprise three interrelated components: the target, the bullet (therapeutic agent), and the gun (the way of delivering the bullet on target). This description characterizes surgery as a way of delivering. If side effects are effects that do not affect the target, surgical procedures are mostly side effects, with significant morbidity. Future surgical rationales should reconcile target-specific therapy and minimal collateral damages: Minimal Surgery! or to use a new buzz, less invasiveness. Cardiac surgery has focused too much on surgical practice and neglected the rest of cardiology, missing opportunities for new researches, new rationales, and new techniques. Surgeons must become again Renaissance Men, involved in the entire field of cardiology, with a special skill in surgical techniques. Cardiac surgeons should no longer confine their practice to the delivering end. This end does not, any more, justify the means.