Use of stents to treat kinks causing obstruction in a left internal mammary artery graft

Left internal mammary arteries (LIMA) are used routinely as grafts to the l eft anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) in selected patients undergoi ng coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery because of better long-term patency rates, pathology other than fibrointimal hyperplasia, accelerated a therosclerosis, or thrombus can sometimes cause obstructive lesions in such grafts, This report illustrates a kink in a LIMA graft to the LAD causing an obstructive lesion shortly after surgery and describes the subsequent ma nagement of this lesion with intracoronary stents. (C) 1999 Wiley-Liss,Inc.