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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2003;126:1663-1664
© 2003 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Letters to the editor

Authors should list confounding factors and alternative explanations for adverse events seen with new technologies

^a Cardiac Surgical Unit, Harefield Hospital, Middlesex, United Kingdom

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

To the Editor:

Two articles in your February 2003 issue raise concerns about the Symmetry connector (St Jude Medical, St Paul, Minn) for coronary artery bypass surgery. Hornik and colleagues¹ reported 4 of 70 uses and Reuthebuch and colleagues² reported 7 of 77 uses of Symmetry where severe proximal stenosis occurred. Implicit in both articles is a suggestion that the Symmetry device contributed to proximal graft failures. The observations of Hornik and Reuthebuch, however, cannot be regarded as evidence of such an association for 2 main reasons (neither of which were highlighted in the articles).

1. The practice reported is not typical of . . . [Full Text of this Article]