[Off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting and other minimally invasive techniques].

Although coronary surgery was first carried out without the use of extracorporeal circulation more than 40 years ago, it was not until the second half of the 1990s and thanks to an important technological development that it became a standardized reproducible technique. There is significant terminological confusion between the different forms of so-called minimally invasive technique. There are even important technical variations in off-pump coronary surgery involving median sternotomy. The present article reviews the reasons for this renaissance, the terminology used, current progress, key technical requirements, and new developments in anesthesia and postoperative management. Our approach to the technique has resulted in us carrying out full arterial revascularization in the beating heart using both internal mammary arteries. Part of this article is devoted to the specific technical details of this form of revascularization and to the results obtained in our first 1000 patients. Finally, we comment on the scientific evidence concerning coronary surgery without extracorporeal circulation that was reviewed at the ISMICS Consensus Conference in Paris in 2004: in expert hands, coronary surgery without extracorporeal circulation is just as safe and effective as conventional surgery, reduces some forms of morbidity, and, according to nonrandomized but adjusted studies, decreases mortality in high-risk patients.