Off-pump coronary artery bypass graft surgery is standard of care: where do you stand?

The cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) has allowed the establishment of coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) to be a safe and effective treatment for patients with ischemic heart disease. However, the concern that CPB may be responsible for CABG-related morbidity has been raised, and it has been suggested that CABG itself would be safer without CPB. The development of commercially available cardiac stabilization devices resulted in several large, nonrandomized retrospective case series. The studies demonstrated that CABG can be performed safely without CPB (off-pump surgery), and suggested that there are benefits compared with conventional CABG. However, the randomized controlled studies published to date have been, as a whole, unable to conclusively demonstrate advantages of off-pump CABG. The results of these randomized studies are likely responsible for the failure of off-pump CABG to become established as the standard of care.