[Description of arterial grafts from the aspect of preoperative angiography].

Bilateral internal thoracic arteries (ITA) and right gastroepiploic artery (RGEA) have come into more frequent use of late in coronary revascularization. Angiography of these arterial grafts, however, is performed only postoperatively in almost all patients. There have, so far, been no reports giving a preoperative angiographic description of each arterial graft. In this paper, we describe a study in which we performed preoperative angiography of ITA and RGEA and made a comparison of various grafts, which yielded interesting findings. Twenty-four patients (68 arterial grafts) who were judged to need surgery were performed preoperative angiography of the grafts. The diameter of ITA was measured at three points--the proximal part (Prox), center (Cent) and bifurcation of the artery near the rectus abdominal muscle (Bif). The diameter of RGEA was measured at two points--the proximal part and at 1/2 of the greater curvature of the stomach (Mid). The graft diameter of RGEA was 2.78 mm and significantly the largest, followed by RITA (2.59 mm) and LITA (2.08 mm), when the diameters of the proximal parts of the grafts were compared. Comparison of the diameters of RGEA-Mid and ITA-Bif, which were expected to be the anastomosis sites, also showed that RGEA was significantly the largest, and that the right ITA tended to be larger than the left ITA. Of the 24 patients, 68 arterial grafts, on which angiography was performed, 2 patients were found to have arterial occlusion and 1 to have arteriostenosis.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)