It was the dream of humanity to perform surgery on an open non-beating heart. Scientific and medical discoveries five thousand years ago in China, partially adopted by the Western civilization, laid, through ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome and, later on in the Renaissance, the foundations for the development of empirical medicine. The 19th and the 20th centures shoved dynamic scientific and technical development in various fields including medicine and surgery whose importance grew with the necessity to help the patients wounded in the wars. A break-through event in the development of surgery was overcoming of pain and discovery of reasons of infections and the control thereof, and, in the case of cardiology and cardiac surgery, the discoveries in physiology of circulation and the diagnostics of cardiovascular system diseases. This review contains a brief description of medical science in the past centuries, emphasizing the most important discoveries. A focus has been placed on the contribution of general surgery and thoracic surgery to the development of Polish and World cardiac surgery. The I Congress of the Polish Surgeons was held in 1889 in the Austria occupied territory of Cracow, which celebrated its one hundredth anniversary. The main obstacles in the development of clinical cardiac surgery included intratracheal general anesthesia, antisepsis and aseptics, hypothermia, oxygenators, extracorporeal circulation, transfusions, blood clotting and thromboses and cardioplegia. The spectacular heart and aorta surgical operations performed for the first time in the world and in Poland as well as the names of cardiac surgeons employed by the important cardiac surgery centers in Poland have been mentioned. The Department of Heart, Vascular and Transplantology Surgery of Cracow, the role and the share of Fundacja Rozwoju Kardiochirurgii COR AEGRUM in Cracow (COR AEGRUM Foundation for the Development of Cardiac Surgery in Cracow) in the construction of the new facilities for the Department of Cardiac Surgery of Cracow consecrated on June 9, 1997 by pope John Paul II, have been discussed. The contribution of the Club of Polish Cardiac Surgeons to the integration of surgical community and to development of the Polish cardiac surgery has been emphasized. In summary, it has been outlined that the contemporary standards of the Polish cardiac surgery do not differ from cardiac and vascular surgery and transplantology in developed countries.
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