ABSTRACT
The ability to treat coronary artery disease has expanded incredibly in the last decade resulting in increased public demand and medical workload. Recent advances in interventional cardiology have had a substantial impact on cardiac surgery and many patients with coronary artery disease previously treated surgically now undergo percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) including percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) and intracoronary stenting. Consequently, cardiac surgeons now see few elective patients requiring single or double grafts for discrete disease and accept that the disease process in patients now referred for coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) is frequently more severe and diffuse in nature than previously.
