A Year of Advances in Cardiac Surgery, Transplantation, and Anesthetic Management

Superlatives and acronyms abound in this year’s edition of annual noteworthy literature for Seminars in Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia. By the numbers, over 22 000 publications from 2024 were screened, and approximately 85 selected to be included in this year’s breakdown of the most salient works and findings. Warranting a special notation, the field of liver transplant alone experienced the publication of 4571 clinical trials.

Contained within, is the distillate of this past year’s developments in medical science; breakthroughs, updates and guidelines. Experts from across the continuum of perioperative medicine and critical care have done a fantastic job reviewing published articles in the fields of cardiothoracic anesthesiology, critical care, congenital heart disease, abdominal organ transplant, and cardiothoracic surgery. Below is a summary of highlights from each field and a primer for each review. In this year of firsts, robots and technology play a central role, while artificial intelligence looms large in shaping future innovations. New guidelines were set forth, while others revised and updated. Old questions re-present with new answers. As 2025 progresses, and we grapple with the current uncertainty of unprecedented funding cuts from the NIH, among other policy changes, that are shifting how academic medical universities are supporting the biomedical research enterprise; sit back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of the labor of these noteworthy authors as they review the year 2024.