What is new in cardiothoracic surgery?

Additional advances include percutaneous aortic valve replacements, which is replacing the heart’s aortic valve through the blood vessels, as opposed to open heart surgery, and improvements in ventricular assist devices, which are implantable pumps for people with weakened hearts or heart failure.

Is cardiac surgery a good field?

The earnings potential and personal fulfillment for a cardiothoracic surgeon may more than offsets the years of schooling and associated expenses. Advances in cardiothoracic surgery make this young and growing medical field safer than it has ever been. Four specific advances have improved survival rates for patients.

What is the latest treatment for heart failure?

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Farxiga (dapagliflozin) oral tablets for adults with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction to reduce the risk of cardiovascular death and hospitalization for heart failure.

What is the new drug for heart failure?

FDA on Tuesday granted Entresto, a combination of sacubitril and valsartan, an indication to treat patients with heart failure (HF) with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), the first time a therapy has been approved for this population.

What is the future of cardiac surgery?

Routine preservation of myocardial structure and function for periods of several hours has been achieved. The future holds dramatic advances that will transform the cardiac surgeon, in part, into an interventionalist with new skills in diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to structural heart disease.

Is cardiac surgery a dying specialty?

Cardiac surgery is not dying but is in fact a specialty in its adolescence adapting to the evolution of modern medicine. New and evolving technology has always guided cardiac surgeons.

How will technological advancements impact cardiac surgeons?

Technological advancements will always be two steps ahead of proven therapies because of the time it takes to evaluate long-term clinical outcomes. For this reason, the cardiac surgeon’s job will be to ensure that suboptimal treatments are not allowed to be justified by their less invasive methods.

Why did cardiac surgery become a specialty?

The concomitant identification of a vast, untapped population of patients with atherosclerotic heart disease led to an explosion of cardiac surgery as a specialty, catapulted it to the forefront of medicine, and attracted the best and brightest to the field.