[Arrested coronary artery bypass grafting with modified percutaneous cardiopulmonary support circuit (mini-pump...

Therapeutic strategy for ischemic heart disease has been changing in this decade. We attempted to improve the conventional extracorporeal circulation with the aim of less invasive coronary artery revascularization. Our extracorporeal circulation has been used since 2002, and called the 'mini-pump system' or 'MECC (minimized extracorporeal circulation) system'. The mini-pump system has a centrifugal pump, a membrane oxygenator, a soft reservoir and the characteristics of low prime volume completely closed circuit and low volume cardioplegia. We investigated the degree of invasiveness of the mini-pump system by examining the clinical outcomes (minimum hematocrit, the amount of transfusion and so on), thrombin-antithrombin III complex (TAT), complement factor (C3a) and interleukin (IL)-10 levels. The mini-pump system demonstrated better value than the conventional extracorporeal circulation (TAT; 19.5 : 66.1 ng/ml, C3a; 1,349 : 1,895 mg/dl, IL-10; 105 : 486 pg/ml, respectively) and proved to be less invasive. The incidence of postoperative atrial fibrillation using the mini-pump system was less than that of the conventional extracorporeal circulation. In this issue we presented the vista of the mini-pump system by showing how it decreased invasiveness.