Abstract 12848: Arterial Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting is Associated With Improved Long-Term Survival in Elderly Patients

Introduction: Bilateral Internal Thoracic Artery (ITA) grafting in the elderly is controversial because of their shorter life expectancy , and the excellent survival benefit obtained with single ITA. Methods: One thousand and fourty five patients 70 years old or older who underwent BITA grafting between 1996 and 2008 were compared with 582 patients who underwent CABG with single ITA and SVG and 249 patients who underwent CABG with single ITA and RA. Hypothesis: The purpose of this study is to compare outcome of bilateral ITA(BITA) grafting to that of single ITA and other conduits, such as saphenous veins(SVG) or radial artery(RA), in the subset of elderly patients. In order to account for differences between groups in preoperative characteristics multivariate analyses defined predictors of early and late mortality after forcing propensity score with patients’ characteristics into the models Results: Occurrence of female gender (27% versus 42% and 34% , in the B ITA, RA and SVG groups respectively) diabete...