Left breast necrosis following cardiac bypass surgery

The following is a case report of left breast necrosis following coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) in a woman previously treated for a stage I breast carcinoma. To our knowledge this is the first such report of its kind in the literature. We believe that breast tumor extirpation and internal mammary artery utilization in combination are not sufficient insults on the vascularity of the breast to account for necrosis, but rather we feel that a variety of conditions are necessary for vascular compromise to occur.