“…They concluded that a mini-sternotomy can be performed safely for aortic valve replacement without an increased risk of death, major complications (Khoshbin et al, 2011), a reduction in ICU stay time (Brown et al, 2009), or clinical benefit (Aybek et al, 2000). Moreover, we excluded 12 studies because they had no control groups (Loulmet et al, 1998;Mishra et al, 1999;Riess et al, 2001;Grossi et al, 2002;Onnasch et al, 2002b;Aybek et al, 2006;Martin et al, 2006;Seeburger et al, 2008;Glaubera et al, 2009;Müller et al, 2011;Reser et al, 2012), which ranged from 22 to 1339 in sample size. However, these studies, with 3085 patients in total, summarized the long-term clinical experience of ALMT, which is useful for making clinical decisions and ensuring the safety of ALMT.…”