Blog

So we have another large study that suggests that doing coronary artery bypass surgery on a beating heart may be bad for patients. This time it is a study conducted by the Korean heart surgeons. Do we believe it or do we doubt the conduct of this study? I have just been at a meeting at Oxford, where all off the faculty apart from me are predominantly surgeons who operate on the beating heart. They show excellent results with their techniques and I have no doubt that they are honest about it. So why does the accumulation of evidence suggest that it may not be safe.

I had a unique opportunity to chair a session with some of the big names in the surgical treatment of Atrial fibrillation. The session was in Edinburgh as part of the SCTS university. We had talks from Borut Gershak on Laproscopic, Gian Bisleri on Thoracoscopic, Mark La Meir on Hybrid and Manuel Castella on On pump AF ablation. The session was completed by James Cox on the future of AF management. At the end I convinced them to pose for a selfie in keeping with the Oscar selfie that was creating twitter records.