No-Touch Harvest: The Solution to Laboring in Vein?

of the most common and effective surgical interventions performed around the world, particularly in patients with 3-vessel disease. The left internal mammary graft provides the greatest survival benefit. The most common second graft remains the long saphenous vein, although it has been plagued by poor long-term patency rates. Researchers throughout the world have hunted for an improved second graft with greater long-term patency; due to the success of the left internal mammary, it was assumed that this success would be replicable with additional arterial grafting. This hope was refuted by Taggart et al. in 20191 in a study that compared bilateral internal mammary arteries versus a single internal mammary and vein at 10 years and showed no significant difference in clinical outcomes. Domingos Souza first described a no-touch technique for a saphenous vein harvest in 1996 in an attempt to improve its touch technique preserved endothelial cell integrity, endothelial nitric oxide synthase expression, and reduced vasoconstric