Cardiac surgery is inherently associated with perioperative complications, such as perioperative stroke, myocardial infarction or pneumonia Recent advancements in the field of Computed Tomography (CT) provide the surgeon with an additional tool to prepare for the procedure, by adjusting the operative strategy to the patient specific anatomy. The research described in this thesis has evaluated several applications of preoperative CT to plan for surgery and aimed to investigate whether this led to better outcomes. We have observed that preoperative CT frequently shows aortic calcifications. However, this results in changes in the surgical approach in a minority of cases and does not seem to decrease the risk of stroke. Computed tomography could replace an invasive coronary angiography procedure in selected patients with endocarditis, deffering the risks associated with this procedure in these patients.