Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting: Case Histories of Significant Medical Advances

Abstract

We describe how Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG, or more popularly, “bypass”) operations revolutionized the treatment of coronary disease (that can produce fatal heart attacks and debilitating angina). Specifically we chronicle the: 1) development of the foundational procedures and technologies that provided a base for CABG; 2) early CABG operations performed in the 1960s; 3) rapid – and controversial growth – that occurred in the US in the 1970s and, 4) emergence and rapid diffusion of the less invasive angioplasty alternative that slowed the growth of CABG in the last two decades of the 20th century.