A multicentre review comparing long term outcomes of endoscopic vein harvesting versus open vein harvesting for coronary artery bypass surgery.

Use of keyhole vein removal technique has been increasing for coronary artery bypass surgery for last two decades. However, some surgeons remain worried about the quality and long-term effect of the vein tube removed using keyhole method compared to traditional Open Vein Harvesting (OVH). The aim of this study was to perform a retrospective analysis of the outcomes between keyhole and OVH from three UK centres with 10 years follow-up. In total, 27,024 patients underwent coronary artery bypass surgery with long saphenous vein harvested by either keyhole (n=13,794) or OVH (n=13,230) over a period of 2007­2019. The median follow-up time was 4.54 years for keyhole method and 6.00 years for OVH. Death from any cause occurred in 13.8% of the keyhole group versus 20.8% in the OVH group over the follow-up period. In conclusion, the keyhole surgery survival is not as bad as we hypothesised.