comparison of life quality in patients undergoing open vein harvesting and endoscopic vein harvesting techniques: a prospective cohort study

Background: as the traditional indicators of the operative outcomes, including morbidity and mortality, cannot give sufficient information on a patient’s physical, mental, emotional, and functional well-being alone, we aimed to compare life quality in the patients under open vein harvesting (ovh) and endoscopic vein harvesting (evh) techniques after four years of follow-up.methods: this prospective cohort study followed all the patients who were scheduled for off-pump cabg in the mashhad-based imamreza hospital, in october 2013, for 4 years. accordingly, data related to their quality of life were collected, and their life quality was then compared using the whoqol-bref scale. chi-squared, t-test, fisher exact test, and relative risk were also used.results: this study was conductedona total of 103 patients under the two techniques of ovh(n = 53)andevh(n = 50). the difference between the evh (4.7%) and ovh (16.3%) groups at the demographic characteristics was the transient ischemic attack (p = 0.023). after a 4-years follow-up period, no significant differences were observed between the patients undergoing the two techniques of ovh and evh in all the domains of life quality.conclusions: according to the obtained results, there was no difference in the quality of life between the patients undergoing ovhand evh techniques over a four-year period. in this regard, further investigations are recommended on the quality of life in patients under the two techniques of ovh and evh with long-term follow-up periods.