INTRODUCTION : It took just hundred years for cardiac surgery to advance to what it is today. Before 1896, surgeons considered heart to be "inviolable" and it was stated that operating directly on the pulsating heart can be done but the patient will not survive, In 1896, Ludwig Rehn, a German Surgeon, sutured a wound in the heart caused by stab injury. Discovery of X-ray in 1895 and electrocardiographic recording in 1924, paved the way for the better understanding of diseases of the heart. In 1929, Warner Frossman from Germany did the first right heart catheterization on himself.
Rehn and Sauerbrock from Germany did the first partial pericardiectomy for constrictive pericarditis (1913). Mitral stenosis was one of the earliest intra cardiac lesions to be treated surgically. Cutler and Levine (1923) using a special knife attached to the finger and Souttar is using digital dilatation were the earliest surgeons to treat mitral stenosis. However, effective closed mitral valvotomy procedures were established by Harken and Bailey in the US and Brock in UK.