Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG); Endoscopic vein harvesting; Ischemic heart disease; Patency; Results

Endoscopic harvesting of venous grafts (EVH) is a progressive and developing technique in the area of surgical treatment of ischemic heart disease. The main reason for the increasing frequency of its use is the decrease of postoperative pain, lower rate of early infectious complications, lesser swelling of the operated extremity, lower incidence of haematomas, earlier mobilization of the patient, and greater patient satisfaction with the cosmetic effect. These advantages of EVH have been repeatedly confi rmed in numerous studies, and it may be regarded as undisputable that, as far as short-term outcomes are concerned, EVH is much better than open vein harvesting (OVH). As far as medium-term results are concerned, at present we have a suffi cient number of studies proving comparable results of EVH and OVH. The main controversy persists regarding the long-term results of the EVH technique, where we lack a suffi cient amount of data in order to be able to prove identical or better outcomes of EVH, when compared with the OVH technique. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016.