Cardiac surgery: the infinite quest Cirurgia cardíaca: a busca infinita

What are these series of articles about? Hopefully the readers can find in them a series of concepts and their potential applications to daily practice — some borrowed from my previous work and some from others, in an attempt to expand the horizon of my knowledge. Although I have already presented and written on these subjects, the aim in returning to some of them, as well as adding new ones, is not just to offer new information but more importantly to propose some provocative viewpoints and theories for everyone involved with each and every encounter. I am challenging the reader in the belief that a continuous reassessment of our thoughts and convictions by defying reality can be helpful to verify the sustainability of previous judgments: “By studying how new observations led to the revision of important theories one can see that science is not about immutable laws but provisional explanations that get revised when a better one comes along.” The repeated `trial` of a certain event is precisely what leads to new understandings — which in turn can instigate even newer understandings [1]. When Albert Einstein wrote “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them” he was suggesting that if we always think the way we have always thought, we will always do what we have always done, and if we advocate and do what we have always done, we will get what we have always gotten — stagnation of thinking. In addition, his observation remains us of the need to reflect on the issues, challenges, and opportunities in front of the profession and specialty — a future that most likely will be quite different from the recent past. “History is where the future begins” [2]. “You only look to the past to create a solution for the future. If you look down, you can only see a few feet, but if you look up, the view is infinite” [3].As J. Matloff put it, “The future of medicine would evolve almost entirely as a function of leadership and management capabilities. Beyond whether this evolution could happen, concern was expressed having to do with where that leadership would emerge from government, business, or medicine” [4]. Therefore, it is important that physicians and health professionals take an active role in the political, economic, and social aspects of society — social cure — in order to defend the interests of those suffering. The time has come when those involved have to decide if they will continue to be a part of the problem, or