Monitoring changes in heart tissue temperature and evaluation of graft function after coronary artery bypass grafting surgery

Raimundas Lekas, Povilas Jakuška, Algimantas Kriščiukaitis, Vincentas Veikutis, Gintautas Dzemyda¹, Tomas Mickevičius, Kristina Morkūnaitė², Alina Vilkė, Povilas Treigys¹, Genuvaitė Civinskienė³, Jonas Andriuškevičius³, Tomas Vanagas³, Kęstutis Skauminas, Jurga Bernatonienė³

Institute for Biomedical Research, Kaunas University of Medicine, ¹Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Vilnius, ²Institute of Cardiology, Kaunas University of Medicine, ³Kaunas University of Medicine, Lithuania

Key words: thermography; ischemia; autovenous graft; coronary artery bypass grafting.

Summary. Thermography is a relatively new contact-free method used in experimental and clinical studies and in cardiovascular surgery to investigate the myocardium and coronary artery function. Objects of complex study included mongrel dogs and patients with coronary artery disease who underwent cardiac surgery. For active dynamic thermography, we used a thermovision camera “A20V” (FLIR Systems, USA). Our data indicate that both experimental and clinical study performed on beating hearts could be an important approach to interoperation inspection of autovenous graft function. An infrared camera also can be successfully used to determine the extent of ischemic damage to the myocardium, heart, and blood vessels during surgery as a significant prognostic tool for evaluating outcome after cardiac operation.

Correspondence to R. Lekas, Institute for Biomedical Research, Kaunas University of Medicine, Eivenių 4, 50009 Kaunas, Lithuania. E-mail: vincentas.veikutis@med.kmu.lt

Received 26 February 2008, accepted 6 March 2009