Safe Coronary Artery Occlusion With a New Tourniquet in Off-Pump Bypass Grafting Hirokuni Arai, MD, PhD, Keiji Oi, MD, Hiroyuki Tanaka, MD, PhD, Noriyuki Tabuchi, MD, PhD, Makoto Sunamori, MD, PhD The Annals of Thoracic Surgery Volume 80, Issue 3, Pages 1137-1139 (September 2005) DOI: 10.1016/j.athoracsur.2004.03.077 Copyright © 2005 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Terms and Conditions
Fig 1 (Left) The spring-equipped tourniquet. The plastic cap portion telescopes into the polyvinyl chloride tube portion. These 2 portions are interposed by a fine spring and can slide back and forth within the elastic compression range of the spring. (Right) The force-compression characteristics of the spring indicate a spring rate of 9 g of force (gf) per millimeter. The Annals of Thoracic Surgery 2005 80, 1137-1139DOI: (10.1016/j.athoracsur.2004.03.077) Copyright © 2005 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Terms and Conditions
Fig 2 (Left) The coronary artery is gently occluded with the spring-equipped tourniquet. The plastic cap locks the snare sutures; the coronary artery is indirectly compressed by spring pressure. Optimal coronary occlusion is established by fine adjustment of spring compression. (Right) Solid and open arrows indicate spring expansion force and coronary artery compression force, respectively. The Annals of Thoracic Surgery 2005 80, 1137-1139DOI: (10.1016/j.athoracsur.2004.03.077) Copyright © 2005 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Terms and Conditions