[Emergency coronary artery bypass grafting for acute coronary syndrome with preoperative intraaortic balloon pumping; comparative surgical outcome and long-term results].

With recent technical improvements in catheter interventional therapy, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) has now become the treatment of first choice for acute coronary syndrome (ACS). The objective of the present study was to evaluate critically the timing of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) for severe ACS with preoperative intraaortic balloon pumping (IABP). Since 1994, a total of 70 patients have gone emergency or urgent CABG for ACS. Of 70 patients, 50 patients required preoperative IABP. There were 22 patients (17 men, 5 women) with acute myocardial infarction (AMI), with a mean age of 67.7 years, and 28 patients (19 men, 9 women) with unstable angina pectoris (UAP), with a mean age of 69.2 years. There was a significant difference, between AMI and UAP, in the prevalence of emergency operation (95.5% vs 25.0%), in preoperative cardiogenic shock (81.8% vs 17.9%), in the level of preoperative CPK-MB (196.7 IU/l vs 2.0 IU/l) and in preoperative ejection fraction (41.8% vs 47.3%). Two patients in AMI required percutaneous cardiopulmonary support (PCPS). Thirteen patients in AMI and 22 patients in UAP presented left main trunk (LMT) disease. Of the 13 LMT patients in AMI, 4 patients were AMI due to acute occlusion in the LMT. The AMI patients received 2.45 distal anastomoses on average, while the UAP patients 3.14 distal anastomoses (p = 0.019). Excluding the mean number of distal anastomoses, there was no difference in the intraoperative technical factors, such as aortic cross clamping duration, cardiopulmonary bypass duration, rate of complete revascularization, between AMI and UAP. There were postoperative significant differences in low cardiac output syndrome (LOS) [45.6% in AMI vs 3.6% in UAP] and in prolongation of mechanical ventilation (59.1% in AMI vs 14.3% in UAP). The hospital mortality was 9.1% (2/22) in AMI, and 3.6% (1/28) in UAP, with no significant difference. Of these 3 patients, 1 patient died from perioperative cerebrovascular accident (CVA), another from LOS, and the other from postoperative mesenteric ischemia, with an overall mortality of 6.0% (3/50). The overall patency rate of the grafts was 100% in AMI and 96.6% in UAP. The 5-year-survival rate excluding in-hospital death was 72.5% in AMI, and 89.6% in UAP. The 5-year-cardiac event-free rate was 77% in AMI and 89.4% in UAP. The overall survival rate, and cardiac event-free rate, at 5 years was 80.8%, and 83.8%, respectively. In conclusion, for ACS cases, especially UAP cases of LMT, in which symptoms, findings of ischemia and hemodynamics are stabilized by medical intervention including IABP; emergency surgery could be avoided immediately after coronary angiography. Recovery in the ischemic myocardium is intended by IABP, and urgent surgery should be performed after sufficient and precise preoperative examinations. An improvement not only in the perioperative but also long-term results can be expected by performing complete revascularizations.