Off-pump Bilateral Internal Thoracic Artery Grafting

Abstract

The long-term benefit of bilateral internal thoracic grafts (BITA) is well established. BITA grafting is often avoided in diabetic, female, obese, elderly and other high-risk patients because of concerns for deep sternal wound infection. The objective of this study is to analyse early results of our BITA grafting and to establish the safety of BITA use in all patients. All cases of isolated consecutive unselected CABG were included in this retrospective study. BITA were used in-situ - one was used to graft left anterior descending artery and the other was used as inflow for a composite graft with radial artery. Dual inflow using in situ BITA grafting allows easy bailout by using an additional vein graft. BITA was used in 574 patients out of 602 (95.35%). Incidence of early death was 1.33% (8/602), stroke 0.5% (3/602), reoperation for bleeding 0.17% (1/602). Deep sternal wound infection was not seen in any patient but nine patients (1.5%) had superficial wound infection which healed with dressing. We have used BITA in 95% of our unselected, consecutive off-pump CABG patients without any major wound complications. Our limited experience has shown off-pump CABG using BITA grafting can be safely adopted routinely with excellent early result.