In revolutionizing the approach to the patient, among the most innovative techniques adopted in both cardiac surgery and interventional cardiology we find the minimally invasive and micro-invasive invasive procedures, including percutaneous techniques, at the forefront. 

Besides having many advantages as regards the overall impact on the general condition of patients - increasingly older and more fragile due to the coexistence of other diseases that prevent the use of conventional treatment (open surgery)-, minimally invasive and micro-invasive techniques lower the risk of infections to a considerable extent; they reduce cardiorespiratory stress; they involve less intraoperative bleeding and they shorten healing and hospitalization times.

Terms like ministernotomy, minithoracotomy, transfemoral or transvenous access have therefore progressively established themselves in specialist activity with respect to modus operandi that required extensive incisions of the sternum and chest to reach the cardiac structures requiring intervention in order to correct functional defects or replace “parts” damaged by diseases.