Jelenc Matija, Kneževič Ivan
Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, University Medical Centre Ljubljana, Zaloska 7, 1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
J Card Surg. 2013 Nov;28(6):641-2. doi: 10.1111/jocs.12153. Epub 2013 Jul 9.
With a skeletonized harvesting technique of the left internal thoracic artery (LITA), opening of the pleural space during dissection can usually be avoided. However, due to the bulging of the ventilated lungs, the LITA graft comes to lie immediately below the sternum at the end of the procedure, which makes it vulnerable to injury in case of a reoperation. The authors present a simple technique to move the skeletonized LITA graft away from the undersurface of the sternum, by using a thymic fat pad flap (TFP).