The Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) involves bypassing major blocks in the blood vessels of the heart to improve the blood to the cardiac muscle (myocardium). The conduits used for bypass grafting can be veins taken from the legs or arterial conduits which include the mammary arteries from the chest wall, the radial artery from the forearm and an artery from near the stomach.

Though the venous conduits are commonly used; arterial conduits are far superior as they last much longer providing relief to the patients for many more years than venous conduits.

At AHI more than 95% of all bypass operations are done using the arterial conduits on a beating heart without the use if the heart – lung machine.

The following pictures have been taken in our operating room and show various stages of the operation.

In this picture the top end of the radial artery graft has been joined to the aorta to provide blood to the affected myocardium.

This picture shows the distal coronary artery which has been opened for grafting. The size of the coronary artery in the average Indian patient varies between 1 to 2 mm in diameter.

The graft has been sutured to one of the blood vessels to provide adequate blood flow and thereby prevent a heart attack and / or anginal pain. The stitching is done with surgical sutures which are thinner than the human hair.

In advanced coronary disease almost the entire inner lining of the artery is thickened and hard. The plaques have to be removed before bypass grafting, a procedure called Coronary Endarterectomy

The following two pictures show the endarterectomy specimen which resembles a plaster cast of the artery and its branches.