Abstract
I read with interest the special report by Dr Lazar1 on off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting (OPCAB). I congratulate him for the exhaustive and lucid review. I would like to humbly express my opinion about the conclusions derived by the author. The Randomized On/Off Bypass (ROOBY) trial had 12.4% conversion to cardiopulmonary bypass. This is way too high and depicts the inexperience of the OPCAB surgeon. We have reported that it is possible to achieve nearly zero conversion to cardiopulmonary bypass in nonselected consecutive patients by the timely use of intra-aortic balloon pump and elective use of cell saver.2 OPCAB has a steep learning curve. The poor OPCAB graft patency rate may have resulted from the …
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