Summary
During recent years endoscopic techniques have become an important component in surgery. In open-heart surgery, however, these methods have not been seriously taken into consideration, though a reasonable number of various applications can be easily tought of.
Up to now, in 53 patients cardioscopy has been used as a supporting device during different heart-operations. In all cases cardioscopy could be applied without complications. There was no significant increase of aortic clamp time. Cardioscopy was mainly used to control the exact and sufficient resection of hypertrophied myocardial or membranous tissue or to visualize the result after valve reconstruction. The first experiences with this new technique show that cardioscopy is a helpful and supporting device in open heart surgery.