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What Will Be the Impact of Drug-Eluting Stents on Hybrid Coronary Revascularization?
(#2002-01110 ... September 17, 2002)
Hratch L. Karamanoukian, MD, Pierre S. Aoukar
Center for Less Invasive Cardiac Surgery and
Robotic Heart Surgery, Kaleida Health,
Buffalo General Hospital, Buffalo, New York
EXCERPT
Although the evolution of drug-eluting stents is almost as
recent as hybrid revascularization itself, serious consideration
should be given to incorporating the sirolimus-eluting
stent into prospective clinical trials of ICR, thus simultaneously
assessing their synergistic and independent effects on
CAD. The impact of minimally invasive surgery combined
with interventional procedures that together yield results
that are not only comparable to but will very likely surpass
the success of CABG over the last generation is immeasurable.
No one has more to benefit from such advances than
those suffering from CAD. At essence here is the improvement
of patients' quality of life. In other words, implementation
of hybrid revascularization may lead not only to a
longer life but, more important, to a life better lived.
Regardless of our field, humanism reaches each one of us
individually as physicians. And if humanism in medicine had
one voice it would speak to the eradication of barriers
between surgeons and interventionalists. As a result, we may
witness a new era in the treatment of CAD, with outcomes
we could not have imagined on our own.
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