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CABG: Atypical Graft

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0:00

This is an interesting case.

0:02

It's a younger patient in their sixties prior bypass graft,

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and, um, kind of an interesting, relatively rare situation.

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I wanna show you one thing. We've got a sternotomy

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and, um, so you know,

0:15

you're gonna make sure you scan from the junction

0:16

of the first rib of the clavicle.

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This is a scan that we would've missed though

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some of the bypass grafts.

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If we didn't have history. There's an entire, uh,

0:24

abdomen included here, uh, for a reason.

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So let's look through the graft.

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Perhaps you didn't get good history or weren't given any.

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Um, so first things first, Lima is off the chest wall.

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The RIMA is also off the chest wall, so you know,

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bilateral arterial grafts.

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Um, and I won't belabor them too much other than

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to say the Lima looks okay.

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Uh, we'll worry about the runoff. That looks pretty good.

0:45

We'll worry about that later. Um,

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and then let's find, uh, the next graft.

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So the next arterial graft would be the rema

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that goes to the right side.

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They tend not to cross, uh, the chest if they can help it.

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Um, and that goes to the, some part of the distal RCA, uh,

1:00

at least over to this acute marginal branch.

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And then looks like there might be an occluded segment,

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but a patent, uh, distal RCA Next, uh,

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vessel I'm worried about is a circumflex.

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And I do see a cannulation site here.

1:15

That's not a pseudo aneurysm.

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Uh, if you're not sure though, it's really nice

1:18

to have a non-contrast scan just for teaching purposes.

1:21

Let's pop that up. And so I'll throw the non-con in

1:24

here and you can see that's just calcium.

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That's not a little pseudo aneurysm.

1:27

I really like having a non-con scan

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to sort the questions like that out.

1:30

You never know when they come up. Um, okay, the left

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main certainly looks stenotic, if not occluded.

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And then you have a bunch of disease

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and stents in the, uh, circumflex.

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Um, and then as I come down, we know that the, uh,

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RCA is your dominant vessel,

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but there's this extra vessel right here, we can kind

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of follow that downward and, uh, we lose it.

1:57

So there's some kind of a bypass that's going

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to the distal RCA branches.

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And you know that that's a very, uh,

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diseased posterior descending artery.

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So this was known

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and it was in done with an inclusion of the abdominal

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aorta on this scan.

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Actually, a better way to show that would be just

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to look at this volume rendered image here.

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And so that's actually a gastro artery bypass graft

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to the distal RCA.

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Uh, it's rarely used graph,

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but you'd really need to

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clear everything including the inflow.

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So you have to have a much more inclusive scan.

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So here's the full field of view.

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So this scan range is far longer

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than all the others I've shown you.

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And you can trace this bypass graph from the distal RCA

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and then just follow it backwards all the way down past the

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liver and the stomach down, down.

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And here it is where it begins life

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as a proper gastro block artery.

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And then you can follow that back to its origin.

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And so, just like in the Lima,

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you need to clear this subclavian.

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Uh, in the gastro oleic,

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you wanna make sure there's not a stenosis on any

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of the donor vessels.

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So the aorta, the celiac artery, this is the,

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the SMA, but that's not, uh, relevant here.

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But if you did have a stenosis like that,

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you'd at least wanna investigate carefully.

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So kind of a nice case with a variant anatomy.

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So let's see what it looks like, uh,

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on an invasive angiogram.

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And here we've just gone to the, the right coronary artery.

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And so there it is.

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So the RCA occlusion and, um, kind of a, a stump.

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So not unexpected.

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The RCA is bypassed by the RIMA as well as by

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that gastro hyperopic artery.

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Little harder to find those anastomosis,

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but here attempt to cannulate success.

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Um, okay, there's the graft. Follow that down.

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So to the distal, uh, RCA

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looks like we did not select out for the gastro pathic,

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but it's already known by the CTA.

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So we've spared them that There's actually some nice

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trials, uh, that have come out.

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One of 'em is the bypass CTA trial, just showing

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that you can abbreviate the evasive angiogram

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and actually have better outcomes if you can count on the CT

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to do clearance, um, of some vessels ahead of time, as well

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as to guide

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and tailor the protocol so you don't have

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to inject as much contrast.

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And as you know, the, the arterial side contrast tends

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to have a lot more deleterious effects

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than venous side contrast.

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So, um, this is just a look at the distal LED,

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you can see the anastomosis

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and it's also a nice example of

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how the invasive angiogram has a very

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superior spatial resolution.

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So we were not quite seeing the LAD well on the ct,

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but you can see it nicely.

4:38

It's a little finer spatial resolution.

4:40

So a unique case with unique anatomy.

Report

Faculty

Brian Ghoshhajra, MD, MBA, MSCCT

Academic Chief, Cardiovascular Imaging and Associate Chair, Operations Analytics

Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School

Tags

Vascular

Coronary arteries

Cardiac CT (SCCT Cat B1 Video Case)

Cardiac

CTA

CT

Angiography