Study questions popular practice in bypass surgery

Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2009

A study concluded that the most commonly used method for extracting leg veins for grafts in coronary bypass surgery was more dangerous than the traditional method and resulted in more deaths among patients. Companies making vein-extraction devices, and some doctors, cast doubt on the study's conclusions, saying that it was not scientifically rigorous enough. But the finding is likely to raise concerns in the cardiology field and among patients undergoing cardiac bypass, an operation done about 300,000 times a year in the U.S.