Harvesting bilateral internal thoracic arteries using a novel subxiphoid approach versus the conventional lateral thoracic approach--results of an experimental study.

Objectives: A new method was developed to harvest bilateral internal thoracic artery grafts using a subxiphoid approach and robotic assistance. The present study compared the potential utility of the subxiphoid method with that of the lateral thoracic approach.

Methods: The first part of the study examined the optimal placement of the instrument ports to maximize the robotic arms' range of motion. The second part of the study examined the 2 approaches for harvesting bilateral internal thoracic arteries from pig carcasses. The obtained graft lengths and time needed to conduct each procedure were compared using the Mann-Whitney U test.

Results: The preliminary study suggested that optimal positioning of the instrument ports was achieved by placing the right and left instrument ports far apart and linearly arranging all the ports. Using this configuration, the subxiphoid approach yielded a left internal thoracic artery that was 11.7 ± 1.90 cm long compared with 9.17 ± 0.74 cm using the conventional approach (P = .0131). The right internal thoracic arteries (11.8 ± 1.69 cm) obtained using the subxiphoid approach were significantly longer than those obtained using the conventional approach (8.88 ± 0.58 cm). The time needed to harvest the right internal thoracic arteries (34.7 ± 8.14 minutes) was significantly shorter using the subxiphoid approach than using the conventional approach (52.3 ± 8.21 minutes).

Conclusions: Because of the maximized lengths of the grafts and the duration of the procedure, the robot-assisted subxiphoid approach could be an effective method for performing minimally invasive myocardial revascularization in patients with multivessel disease.