Follow-up of Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Patency by Multislice Computed Tomography

Coronary artery disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality across the world and coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) is the most common surgical procedure for treatment. Patients with recurrent ischemic symptoms after CABG are most likely to have occluded or significantly stenosis in grafts or native coronary arteries. Therefore, there is a need to evaluate the patency of these vessel conduits after CABG. Until now, selective coronary angiography is the traditional gold standard for the assessment of both native coronary arteries and bypass grafts. But it is an invasive procedure that requires x-ray exposure, hospitalization, and includes a risk for complication. However, there is an alternative noninvasive method, multislice computed tomography (MSCT), with high specificity and excellent sensitivity for the detection of the coronary artery disease. It is even cheaper and takes shorter time to perform. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to use MSCT to evaluate the patency and the quality of all grafts and native coronary arteries after CABG for more than two years. In addition, we will elucidate the relationship of these data and CABG procedures to review our experience.