Below is a video showing how I expose the coronary artery in preparation for sewing. The heart shown below is stopped with medication known as cardioplegia. The patient’s heart and lung function has been taken over by the heart-lung machine.
You’ll note that there is a lot of fat on the heart. This is fairly common, though there certainly extra fat in this case.
I’m using an electro-cautery device to gently move the fat away from the surface of the coronary artery.
The next two videos will show my sewing the saphenous vein to the coronary artery. The first video shows how we start the sewing and the second video shows the anastomosis being completed. I know it’s hard for you to see the coronary vessel well in the videos. That’s because they’re really small, about 2-3mm in diameter. In order to perform the operation we wear microscopic glasses known as ‘loupes.”
This last video shows my sewing the left internal mammary artery to the left anterior descending coronary artery.
