Chief of cardiac surgery Jennifer Lawton discusses a study showing that although arterial grafts prolong survival when compared to vein grafts from the leg, the technique is used less in women than in men.
Hello. My name is Jennifer Lawton and I'm the chief of cardiac surgery at Johns Hopkins. I'd like to tell you about one of the talks we recently presented at the Society of Thoracic Surgeons are largest cardiothoracic surgery organization worldwide. At this meeting, we presented data entitled Sex Differences in Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting Techniques. And what we did is we looked at over two million records of patients across the country who underwent coronary artery bypass grafting surgery. And we compared the use of arterial grafts being the left internal mammary artery or the right internal mammary artery or the radial artery from the arm usage in women compared to men. We also looked at complete revascularization, which means the surgeon provided a new blood vessel to each of the areas of the heart that needed more blood flow or had a significant blockage. And what we found in these results is that women were less likely than men to receive these arterial grafts, including the internal mammary artery, which is inside the chest wall or the radial artery from the arm. In addition, women were less likely to receive complete revascularization, and you may ask yourself, well, What difference does this make? Why do we care? Well, it turns out the use of arterial grafts compared to vein grafts from your leg actually prolong survival because thes graphs are less likely to form blockages. Overtime, like vein grafts are from your leg, they prolong survival of the patient. In addition, complete revascularization is known to prolong survival. Therefore, these findings are very important and can help us improve outcomes in female patients. In addition, at Johns Hopkins, we have a quality metric in our division to improve arterial grafting in all of our patients, men and women in order to give them prolong survival. I hope you find this topic exciting as we dio Thank you so much for your attention.
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