Direct Aortic Cannulation in Minimally Invasive Mitral-Valve Operations

Abstract

The minimally invasive Port-Access (Heartport, Red-wood City, CA) approach in mitral-valve operations originally required femoral arterial cannulation, which is considered a disadvantage, especially in patients with peripheral vessel disease. In this study 20 patients were prospectively ran-domized into 2 groups, to undergo either standard femoral (group A) or direct aortic cannulation (group B). Pre- and postoperative data as well as markers for myocardial damage were assessed. Postoperatively, patients of group B showed lower levels of damage, indicating that direct aortic cannu-lation might provide better myocardial protection. Further-more, the direct aortic cannulation technique may eliminate complications associated with the standard femoral artery cannulation.