Histopathologic insight into saphenous vein bypass graft disease.

Objectives: Vein graft disease is a major drawback of coronary artery bypass grafting. However, histopathologic studies of old human aortocoronary grafts are scarce.

Methods: We screened patients undergoing redo coronary artery bypass grafting at three university hospitals and selected those with at least one excisable old vein graft.

Prolonged QT interval and coronary artery bypass mortality due to heart failure.

QT-interval prolongation has been shown to predict mortality in coronary artery disease and heart failure. To assess the prognostic value of QT interval for death due to low cardiac output after coronary artery bypass grafting, the QT interval was measured in 3 consecutive beats on the preoperative electrocardiogram (leads II and V(4)) in 30 patients who died perioperatively due to heart failure and a control group of 168 randomly matched hospital survivors during the same 3-year period. Mean corrected QT interval was significantly longer in the patients who died compared to the control group (480.

Pathophysiology of aortocoronary saphenous vein bypass graft disease.

Aortocoronary saphenous vein bypass grafting relieves anginal pain in patients with coronary artery disease. However, its effectiveness is limited due to graft failure; the 10-year patency rate is 50%-60%. Early, 1-year and late graft failure may be due to thrombosis, fibrointimal hyperplasia and atherosclerosis, respectively.

Cardiac surgery in an Iranian teaching hospital: outcome and risk factors.

Cardiac surgery in Iran has been associated with different facilities, equipment and patient populations in comparison to countries from which most of the academic papers used for identification of risk factors related to outcome and subsequent establishment of risk stratification models originate from. During a 15-month period all patients admitted for adult cardiac surgery using cardiopulmonary bypass (CBP) in a university affiliated teaching hospital were enrolled in a prospective study. Appropriate statistical tests were used to analyze data for mortality and morbidity.