Coronary artery bypass following percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty

During a 4-year period, 286 patients underwent coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) following percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA). Seventy-three patients had single-vessel and 213 (74.5%) had multivessel coronary artery disease. Twenty-nine patients underwent PTCA because of an evolving acute myocardial infarction (MI). Forty-two patients had previously undergone 47 CABG procedures. One hundred fifteen patients underwent CABG on an emergency basis. Indications for emergency CABG after PTCA were prolonged chest pain (79.1%), worsening of coronary artery obstruction (59.1%), "current of injury" by electrocardiogram (31.3%), cardiogenic shock (27.8%), and, in a lesser incidence, ventricular fibrillation, coronary artery dissection (without obstruction), heart block, and intractable cardiac arrest. The 286 patients underwent 2.1 CABG procedures per patient with a thirty-day mortality of 6.3% (18 patients). The incidence of acute MI was 43.5 versus 4.1%; low cardiac output syndrome, 34.8 versus 7.0%; and operative death, 11.3 versus 2.9% in the emergency and nonemergency groups, respectively. Other significant predictors of operative death were previous CABG (16.7 versus 4.5%), multivessel coronary artery disease (8.0 versus 1.4%). Late follow-up reveals a mortality of 1.4% per year in those patients who were early survivors of CABG.