Briefly occlusive coronary anastomosis with tissue adhesive.

Abstract

We assessed the feasibility of a facilitated, briefly occlusive, sutureless coronary anastomosis technique in which side-to-side preglued (octylcyanoacrylate adhesive) bounded walls were opened by a conventional arteriotomy. In low-flow (prothrombotic milieu, <or=15 mL/min, n = 8) and high-flow (approximately 50 mL/min, n = 8) porcine model of off-pump internal thoracic artery-left anterior descending coronary artery bypass, the anastomoses were evaluated intraoperatively (n = 16) and at 5 weeks (n = 14, with 2 evaluated at 2.5 weeks). The anastomoses were examined by flow measurement, angiography, and histologic studies. Coronary occlusion lasted a median of 1.6 minutes (15th-85th percentile 1.4-1.8 minutes), and anastomosis construction required a median of 5.5 minutes (15th-85th percentile 4.2-6.5 minutes). At 5 weeks all anastomoses were fully patent (FitzGibbon grade A), with an angiographic appearance similar to an end-to-side anastomotic configuration. The briefly occlusive adhesive anastomosis technique proved to be feasible in off-pump bypass surgery in the pig even under prothrombotic low bypass graft flow conditions (<or=15 mL/min). Further studies are warranted to investigate the applicability of this technique to endoscopic bypass surgery on the beating heart.