Joanna Chikwe, MD
At the first plenary session of the 98th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery in San Diego, Mount Sinai’s Joanna Chikwe, MD, Professor of Cardiovascular Surgery, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and David H. Adams, MD, presented a research study examining outcomes of patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery in the state of New Jersey, comparing results in patients treated on an arrested heart while on a heart-lung machine (on-pump) versus those approached on the beating heart (off-pump).
Dr. Chikwe, who is also the Cheng Endowed Professor and Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Director of the Cardiovascular Institute at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, provided data aimed at resolving a four-decade-old debate regarding the optimal approach to perform CABG surgery.
The researchers compared outcomes 10 years after on-pump and off-pump surgery performed by high-volume surgeons in more than 20,000 patients.
“Our preliminary results found that outcomes with on-pump surgery were superior, with lower mortality, lower under-revascularization, and lower need for repeat revascularization after on-pump bypass surgery,” says Dr. Chikwe. Their paper has been provisionally accepted for publication in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
In March, Dr. Adams and Dr. Chikwe wrote an editorial in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology about the same topic, saying, “It is time for the debate to move on.”