A historical appraisal of the techniques of left ventricular volume reduction in ischemic cardiomyopathy: Who did what?

Resection or exclusion of scars following a myocardial infarction on the left anterior descending artery territory started even before the beginning of the modern era of cardiac surgery. Many techniques were developed, but there is still confusion on who did what. The original techniques underwent modifications that brought to a variety of apparently new procedures that, however, were only a "revisitation" of what described before. In some case, old techniques were reproposed and renamed, without giving credit to the surgeon that was the original designer. Herein we try to describe which are the seminal procedures and some of the most important modifications, respecting however the merit of who first communicated the procedure to the scientific world.