The frontier in Cardiac Surgery is intellectual

Cardiac Surgery is a Specialty undergoing profound changes. Since its inception, innovation has been at the forefront of activities seeking for the best of the patients. The introduction of the heart-lung machine in clinical practice in the 1950s of the twentieth century allowed for the correction of intra- and extracardiac defects. The recent past two decades have seen the progressive incorporation of transcatheter therapies to treat a variety of heart defects. Multimodality imaging approach has become a fundamental tool in the pre- intra- and postoperative assessment of patients. The future in Cardiac Surgery contemplates redesigning training programs with the mandatory acquisition of catheter skills, the knowledge of the different imaging modalities and allocation of resources and timing for basic and translational research