[Coronary artery bypass surgery using the mini-extracorporeal circulation system: a Spanish unit's experience]

The increasing use of percutaneous interventions has resulted in a significant reduction in coronary artery bypass grafting. Today, patients referred for surgery are older, have more comorbidities, and have undergone previous percutaneous intervention, and their ventricular function is poorer. As a result, surgery has attempted to improve its results by adopting a number of different strategies. The aim of this study was to investigate and describe one cardiac surgery unit's initial experience with coronary artery bypass grafting using mini-extracorporeal circulation (MECC), which had become its technique of choice.

A retrospective analysis of 408 patients who underwent isolated coronary artery bypass grafting using MECC between January 2004 and April 2007 was carried out. Of the 408, 329 (80.6%) were men, their mean age was 63.5 years (28-83 years), 63% had hypertension, 49.3% had diabetes, 69% had hyperlipidemia, and 52% were smokers.

The surgical mortality rate predicted by the logistic EuroSCORE was 3.7% (range, 1-38). Overall, 34% of patients had left main coronary artery disease and 87% had three-vessel disease. In 74%, complete revascularization was carried out using a mean of 2.97 (range, 1-7) grafts per patient. A mammary artery graft was used in all cases. The in-hospital mortality rate was 0.74%. There were few postoperative complications: 0.98% of patients required further surgery because of bleeding, 3.4% had a significantly elevated troponin-I level, 6.4% developed kidney failure, and 0.5% suffered a stroke.

Coronary artery bypass grafting using MECC enabled complete revascularization to be performed in most patients, and morbidity and mortality rates were low.