MAQUET Cardiovascular LLC, a leading provider of cardiovascular technologies, today announced that study results published in the January 2010 Annals of Thoracic Surgery demonstrated that coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) patients who undergo Endoscopic Vessel Harvesting (EVH) demonstrate similar long-term clinical outcomes as patients who undergo traditional "open" vein harvest (OVH) but have significantly reduced rates of leg infection.
These findings are based on observational data from 5,825 heart surgery patients whose saphenous vein bypass grafts were obtained using MAQUET's EVH VASOVIEW technology (short, approximate 1" length incision) or OVH (continuous, longitudinal incision, or multiple smaller "bridging" incisions) at Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, between June 1, 1998, and May 31, 2007. The results of this study add to the large body of clinical data that EVH offers significant patient benefits, including faster healing, less postoperative pain and scarring, and reduced risk of wound complications.