Researchers Perform Coronary Artery Bypass Without Cutting Chest Wall

A group of NIH researchers successfully performed a coronary artery bypass without cutting the chest wall, the first time that has happened in the world.

The team “employed a novel intervention to prevent the blockage of a vital coronary artery, which is a very rare but often lethal complication following a heart-valve replacement.” This suggests “a less traumatic alternative to open-heart surgery could become widely available for those at risk of coronary artery obstruction.”

The patient needed a novel treatment because of specific anatomical quirks that made other minimally invasive solutions (and the standard valve replacement procedure) dangerous. The procedure involved creating a “new route for blood flow that is a safe distance away from the aortic valve. And rather than cracking open the chest to do it, the researchers use the body’s natural vascular circuitry to reach the heart, slipping catheters through vessels in the legs.” They then create a continuous line from aorta to vein. The team uses a second wire to “feed a coronary bypass graft through the two new openings. Once deployed, the graft provides a new route for blood flow that is out of harm’s way.”

Six months after the operation, “the patient showed no signs of coronary artery obstruction, meaning VECTOR’s first outing in a human proved to be a success. Further deployments in more patients are still necessary before VECTOR is used more widely, but the team is hopeful of continued success following this major step forward. The authors suggest the new technique may also find some footing in treating coronary diseases more broadly, in cases where other approaches, such as stents, fail to keep arteries open.”