Editorial: What is the "Tipping Point" for the Acceptance of New Technologies in Cardiac Surgery?

Hratch L Karamanoukian, MD, Director
Giuseppe D'Ancona, MD

Center for Less Invasive Cardiac Surgery and Robotic Heart Surgery

(#2002-2202 ... February 13, 2002)

INTRODUCTION

The Tipping Point is a book that every cardiac surgeon should read [Gladwell 2000]. Malcolm Gladwell, the author, shows the reader how or "why ... some ideas or behaviors or products start epidemics [revolutions] and other don't. And what [we] can do to deliberately start and control positive epidemics of our own." I found the book, strangely enough, in a bookstore at the airport during my fiight back from the CTT/STS meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. After being introduced to a sundry of devices and technologies that promise new solutions to old problems, I thought that Gladwell had some poignant ideas in The Tipping Point which can help us understand the new world order of cardiac surgery. For example, some of the new technologies which received significant attention at the meetings were robotics, ablative alternatives to the traditional Cox-Maze operation, namely the radiofrequency Maze and the cryomaze as described by Dr. James Cox. Other technologies, which were highlighted, were the LV reconstruction and remodeling operations and gene therapy for adult heart disease.