EFFECTS OF COMPETITIVE BLOOD-FLOW ON ARTERIAL GRAFT PATENCY AND DIAMETER - MEDIUM-TERM POSTOPERATIVE FOLLOW-UP

To identify predictors of arterial graft patency, we followed up 30 in ternal thoracic arterial grafts and 23 right gastroepiploic arterial g rafts in situ with patency documented during postoperative angiography , After 24 months of follow-up on average, repeat angiography detected that one internal thoracic artery and two gastroepiploic arteries wer e anatomically occluded and that the other three gastroepiploic arteri es were nonfunctioning, The logistic regression model identified a rel ationship between graft patency and competitive flow, which was detect ed as stenosis in the recipient coronary arteries (coefficients, p < 0 .05; model, Hosmer-Lemeshow chi(2) statistic 3.59, p = 0.89), The line ar regression model demonstrated that changes in graft luminal diamete r correlated with competitive flow (p < 0.01), smoking history (p < 0. 05), and type of arterial grafts (p < 0.001) (R(2) = 0.40, adjusted R( 2) = 0.36), The findings suggest a temporal relationship between compe titive flow and prognosis of arterial graft.