Vein Harvesting for the Heart

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Video Transcript

Narrator
Matthew Thompson, a cardiac physician assistant at Saint John's Medical Center in Los Angeles, has the mind of a scientist but the skilled and steady hands of an artist.

Matthew Thompson
My function is to harvest or to obtain conduits that can be used to bypass or go around, circumvent obstructions that occur in coronary arteries.

Narrator
On this day, Thompson's patient is Raymond Goldsmith. Thompson is removing a healthy vein from Raymond's leg so it will be ready for Raymond's quadruple bypass operation. In order to get blood to the heart muscle of a by-pass patient more efficiently, surgeons first need to borrow veins or arteries from non-critical areas of the body and then stitch them into the vascular network supplying the heart muscle — re-routing the blood-flow around the blockage. This is called a graft.

Matthew Thompson
It's just L.A. traffic — it's like being stuck on the 405 and getting off and going around on a different route

Narrator
When an artery is needed it's usually taken from the patient's chest during the by-pass surgery itself. When a vein is required, surgeons normally tap the patient's leg. The process, referred to as vein harvesting, has saved many lives but has an aesthetic down side:

Raymond Goldsmith
I've seen a lot of results from vein harvesting. Legs look like, you know, rivers and tributaries.

Narrator
Not to mention the pain from recovering from being cut stem-to-stern. However, in a few hospitals across the country like Saint John's are now using Endoscopic technology

Raymond Goldsmith
Make an incision that's like an inch and a half.

Matthew Thompson
I use that C-ring to kind of move the primary vein out of the way.

Narrator
Doctors use a tiny fiber-optic camera and long, narrow instruments that they tunnel through a small incision to remove the vein with minimal trauma to the leg. Traditional methods make a much longer cut — often from the ankle to groin.

Matthew Thompson
So if we can take that long incision and narrow it down to a single small incision of one or two centimeters, the chances of infections or problems in healing are much reduced.

Narrator
Once the surgical team has the vein, or conduit, they can then perform the by-pass itself:

Matthew Thompson
We're sewing this vein to that artery.

Narrator
Raymond's operation was a success…

Raymond Goldsmith
If you can be happy with a surgery, I'm ecstatic.

Narrator
And the scar from the vein harvesting a small price to pay for Raymond's new lease on life.

Raymond Goldsmith
As I told my doctor, I have another 15 or 20 years to abuse my body…but I was only kidding.

Narrator
For WebMD, I'm Damon Meharg.