Coronary artery bypass grafting in patients with left main coronary artery stenosis. Improved survival in a predominantly Oriental population.

Over the last 10 years, there has been a reduction of surgical mortality in coronary bypass grafting for left main coronary artery disease. Most of the available literature reports are of Caucasian populations. We report our experience of the surgical treatment of this disease in a predominantly Oriental population. From 1 January 1987 to 30 June 1991, 86 consecutive patients had coronary artery bypass surgery for left main stenosis. There were 65 men and 21 women with an age range of 34 to 80 years (mean age: 58 years SD +/- 8.63). There were no operative deaths and 1 hospital death (1.2%) from a non-cardiac cause. The perioperative myocardial infarction rate was 3.5% (3/86). These results are better than some earlier series in which hospital mortality was reported as high as 12.6% and the preoperative myocardial infarction rate 11.8%. In this series where the patients are predominantly Oriental, the results are comparable if not better than in series reported in centres where the population is predominantly Caucasian.