The effect of cholesterol lowering therapy on lima mechanic parameters during coronary by-pass surgery

Purpose: Atherosclerotic heart disease (AHD) is clinical condition that is characterised by narrowing or total occlusion of the coronary arteries, resulting heart muscle failure. Especially lipid lowering pharmaco-therapies and Coronary Artery By-Pass Grafting (CABG) operations are documented as relatively successful procedures in the literature. During CAGB, venous grafts are widely used, hence arterial grafts especially the LIMA became essential for CAGB due to its resistance to atherosclerosis and superiority on patency and given its prestigious place in cardiovascular surgery. Since statin class of medications introduced for this purpose, additional pleitropic effects have been discovered besides its cholesterol lowering effects. These pleitropic effects mostly includes protective effects on endothelial function. We aimed to find the positive effects on LİMA.Materials and methods: In this study we investigated contraction and relaxation forces (dynamics) on LIMA residual samples which are taken from the patients during CAGB surgery who used atorvastatin treatment. For this purpose we compared the LIMA samples from 40 patients who used atorvastatin with a control group of LIMA samples from 33 patients who did not use any lipid lowering medication.Results: No significant differences were found between both groups regarding self contraction and self contraction values. In contrary with comparative analysis made between two groups by calculation of ?relaxation percentage relative to contraction? for each individual patient, showed statistically significant difference in favour of atorvastatin treated group.Conclusion: Eventhough LDL levels were found to be high for atorvastatin treated patients; this result we found may be explanatory for endothelial effects of statin class of medications.Key words: Atorvastatin, LİMA, CABG, Endothelial functions