Patients with ischemic heart disease and disabling angina, for whom CABG or PTCA is impossible, present a difficult chalenge. The Transmyocardial Laser Revascularization (TMLR) provides direct perfusion of ischemic myocardium vialaser by creating transmural channels. Since April 1995 we have treated 11 patients, 9 males, mean age 68 years, with TMLR. Preoperatively 9 were in angina class IV, despite adequate and even maximum clinical medical treatment. The patients were screened preoperatively by SESTAMIBI perfusion scan and pharmacological echocardiogram to identify the location and extention of their reversible ischemia. Operative exposure was obtained via a left anterior thoracotomy. Employing a 850W CO2 laser an average of 30 was created. Bleeding from the channels was controlled by direct finger pressure and rarely by epicardial suture. The early mortality was 2 out of 11 patients. There was no late mortality. All patients revealed improvement in their clinical status, and the mean angina class was 1,8 postoperatively; In 4 patients SESTAMIBI scan was performed at the third postoperative month, and 1 showed improvement in the myocardium perfusion. Those early results indicate that TMLR is a single operative technique that may improve myocardial perfusion and provide angina relief for patients not amenable to standard methods of revascularization. However a larger number of patients and a longer time of follow-up will be needed to have definitive conclusions.
Myocardial revascularization; Laser surgery; Myocardial ischemia; Angina pectoris; Coronary arteriosclerosis; Coronary atherosclerosis