Off-pump coronary artery bypass surgery (OPCAB) means not using extracorporeal circulation (ECC), thus avoiding complications in the lung, kidney, brain, etc., associated with its use.
It has been proven that off-pump coronary surgery reduces mortality and morbidity in high-risk patients, and is undoubtedly beneficial for low-risk patients.
The development of this technique has allowed minimally invasive cardiac surgery to advance.
On the other hand, with the aim of being less aggressive, blood-salvaging devices are used to aspirate and process blood from the surgical field for autotransfusion. Thus allogenic transfusions can be avoided in 70% of cases.