cardiac surgery is a discipline aimed at restoring the best cardiac function of diseased hearts. it is often necessary to implant devices, and surgical tools are of great help in achieving faster and safer procedures. paediatric cardiac surgery is a more recent specialization of cardiac surgery. in paediatric cardiac surgery, the problem is usually related to congenital malformations, consisting in the main of anatomical abnormalities which produce, among other problems, poor oxygenation of the blood, high cardiac afterload, cardiac failure, hemodynamic problems during growth, and so on. the paediatric cardiac surgeon uses his skill and experience to determine the optimal correction in each individual case. in many cases, however, it is not easy to predict the effects of the given surgical procedure that, for success, depends on many different parameters.