Outcomes following surgical revascularization with single versus bilateral internal thoracic arterial grafts in patients with left main coronary artery disease undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting: insights from the EXCEL trial†
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Observational data suggest that the use of a single internal thoracic artery (SITA) may result in inferior outcomes compared with bilateral internal thoracic artery (BITA) use for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG)-a finding not yet supported by randomized trial outcomes. However, the optimal number of internal thoracic artery grafts in patients with left main coronary artery disease has not been investigated. METHODS: The EXCEL trial randomized 1905 patients with left main coronary artery disease to percutaneous coronary intervention with everolimus-eluting stents versus CABG. Among the 905 patients undergoing CABG, 688 (76.0%) received SITA and 217 (24.0%) received BITA. Differences in clinical event rates were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method and compared with the log-rank test. Multivariable Cox regression was used to adjust for differences in baseline covariates. RESULTS: Compared to SITA, patients treated with BITA were younger (66.1 ± 9.5 vs 64.5 ± 9.3 years, P = 0.020), were less likely female (24.3% vs 14.3%, P = 0.002) and diabetic (28.8% vs 15.2%, P < 0.001), and had a lower prevalence of peripheral vessel disease (10.2% vs 5.5%, P = 0.040). The unadjusted 3-year composite primary endpoint of death, stroke or myocardial infarction (MI) occurred in 15.6% of SITA vs 11.6% of BITA patients (P = 0.17). The SITA group tended to have a higher 3-year rate of all-cause death compared with the BITA group (6.7% vs 3.3%; P = 0.070). Stroke, MI and ischaemia-driven revascularization outcomes were not significantly different between groups. After adjusting for baseline differences, neither the composite of death, stroke or MI [hazard ratio (HR) 1.12, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.71-1.78; P = 0.62] nor mortality (HR 1.36, 95% CI 0.60-3.12; P = 0.46) was significantly higher with SITA. The rehospitalization rate after 3 years was higher in the SITA group (35.8% vs 26.0%, P = 0.008), a difference which was no longer present after multivariable adjustment (HR 1.27, 95% CI 0.93-1.74; P = 0.13). Sternal wound dehiscence within 30 days did not occur more often in the BITA group compared to the SITA group (1.8% vs 2.2%, P > 0.99). CONCLUSIONS: In the EXCEL trial, there were no clinical differences at 3 years between SITA or BITA revascularization in patients with left main coronary artery disease.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".