Reply to the Letter to the Editor Reply to Lunkenheimer et al . Skeletonized bilateral internal mammary arteries in

I have read with great attention the comments sent by Paul Lunkenheimer, Klaus Redmann and Robert Anderson, on my Letter ‘Ventricular myocardial band and Ross operation’ [1]. Despite I have repeatedly analyzed their comments, the only argument with some connection with the text of my letter was referring my final comment ‘the new concepts on cardiac anatomy and physiology proposed by Dr Francisco Torrent-Guasp deserve for further and deeper investigations, performed with adequate curiosity, and without nihilism’ [1]. I agree with Lunkenheimer and colleagues that the new concepts of anatomy and physiology supported by Dr Francisco Torrent-Guasp are in full disagreement with centuries of previous observations, but I respectfully disagree that only because of this reason they should automatically be disregarded as ‘spurious’. The invitation to thoroughly investigate the matter, instead of blindly refusing the new observations simply because in disagreement with the previous knowledge, came not only by ourselves [2], but also by other scientists writing on the same topic [3,4]. Furthermore, these were also the conclusions of the scientific meeting ‘The new concepts of cardiac anatomy and physiology. The Torch of Francisco Torrent-Guasp’, organized in Liverpool, England, on May 28th, 2005 (http://www. alderhey.com/Cardiac2005/), where Paul Lunkenheimer was a member of the Faculty. Finally, none of the specific comments criticizing a recent paper by Castella and colleagues on anatomical and physiological observations on the structure/function cardiac interface based on microsonometric findings [5] was addressed to the specific topic ofmy Letter, namely the surgical anatomy of the ventricular outflow tract and its implication for the pulmonary autograft preparation during the Ross operation.