title: FREEDOM, SYNTAX, FAME and FUNCTIONALITY: the future of surgical revascularization in stable ischemic heart disease.
abstract: At the age of nearly 50 years, the procedure of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) now has the most solid evidence supporting its role in revascularization for stable ischemic heart disease in its history. In what is a relatively infrequent occurrence in medicine, the results from large-scale observational database analyses are now aligned with and supported by data from recent randomized trials, providing important contemporary evidence in support of CABG. However, even with strong evidence, the changing landscape of revascularization for stable ischemic heart disease threatens to make this evidence irrelevant in deciding which patients should be referred for CABG in the future. How the procedure of CABG could be modified and optimized for incorporation into this new landscape is discussed in this article.
authors.affiliation: East Carolina Heart Institute, Brody School of Medicine at ECU, Greenville, NC, USA.
authors.forename: T Bruce
authors.initials: TB
authors.lastname: Ferguson
authors.forename: Cheng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D001026:Coronary Artery Bypass / Q000639:trends*; D003324:Coronary Artery Disease / Q000401:mortality / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000601:surgery*; D006801:Humans; D018579:Patient Selection; D062645:Percutaneous Coronary Intervention; D016896:Treatment Outcome