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Thymic Fat Pad Flap to Cover the Left Internal Thoracic Artery Graft
Author(s) -
Jelenc Matija,
Kneževič Ivan
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of cardiac surgery
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.428
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1540-8191
pISSN - 0886-0440
DOI - 10.1111/jocs.12153
Subject(s) - medicine , sternum , dissection (medical) , fat pad , internal thoracic artery , mammary artery , anatomy , surgery , artery , adipose tissue , bypass grafting
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). doi: 10.1111/jocs.12153 (J Card Surg 2013;28:641–642)