No-Touch Vein Harvesting Reduces Vein Graft Occlusion at Three Years

MONDAY, May 5, 2025 (HealthDay News) — A no-touch vein harvesting technique reduces vein graft occlusion and improves patient outcomes at three-year follow-up among patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting surgery, according to a study published online April 30 in The BMJ.

Meice Tian, M.D., from Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, and colleagues conducted a three-year extended follow-up of the randomized PATENCY trial involving 2,655 patients aged 18 years and older undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting surgery at seven cardiac surgery centers in China. Patients were randomly assigned to the no-touch vein harvesting technique group or the conventional approach group. The main outcome measured was vein graft occlusion at three years.

Overall, 99.4 percent of patients attended the three-year follow-up and 86.5 percent received computed tomography angiography. The researchers found that the no-touch group showed a significantly lower vein graft occlusion rate compared with the conventional group (5.7 versus 9.0 percent; odds ratio, 0.62), with an absolute risk difference of −3.2 percent. Consistent findings were seen in the intention-to-treat analysis including all 2,655 patients, with occlusion rates of 6.1 and 9.3 percent in the no-touch and conventional groups, respectively (odds ratio, 0.63; absolute risk difference, −3.1 percent).

“The no-touch vein harvesting technique significantly reduces vein graft occlusion and improves patient outcomes in coronary artery bypass graft surgery,” the authors write. “The persistent advantage in reducing vein graft occlusion at longer-term follow-up and the tendency to improve patient outcomes highlight the broader clinical benefits of this innovative technique.”

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