Fig. 1

Minimally invasive cardiac surgical technique via left anterior mini-thoracotomy is used for the repair of adult subarterial VSDs. a The chest CT scan combined with 3-dimensional reconstruction is used for positioning the subarterial VSD site (the white arrowhead shows). The arrowheads indicate the skin incision accesses used for repair of subarterial VSDs via left anterior mini-thoracotomy, b transverse incision was only chosen by male patients, c longitudinal incision was mainly chosen by female patients