Editorial Ellis Ingles.pmd

S ince the introduction by Floyd Loop at the Cleveland Clinic of the internal mammary artery (IMA) as an arterial graft to bypass the left anterior descending artery (LAD), it has been the gold standard conduit for revascularization, principally because it demonstrated its potent survival benefit in the long term follow-up.1 However, patients with multivessel coronary artery disease (CAD) undergoing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) still required the saphenous vein grafts (SVG) as a bypass conduit to non-LAD coronary arteries and unlike the extremely high durability and patency rates for the LIMA graft, 50% of SVGs develop severe disease or occlusion at 10 years.