Chylous accumulation in the mediastinal space following coronary artery bypass graft surgery

• Main Authors: Bilgehan Erkut, Azman Ates
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cardiocentro Ernesto Che Guevara 2019-07-01
• Series: CorSalud
• Online Access: http://www.revcorsalud.sld.cu/index.php/cors/article/view/424

Chylomediastinum as a complication of cardiovascular surgery has a reported incidence of lower than 0,5% and is extremely rare following intrapericardial pro-cedures. The origin of this complication is a direct injury to the anterior medi-astinum lymphatics in the thymus area or the thoracic duct, at the junction of the left jugular and subclavian veins, obstructing thoracic duct drainage. Firstly, con-servative treatment with low fat and medium chain triglyceride diet is prefered by cutting oral feding. If the drainage persists despite 2 weeks of conservative treatment, the surgical ligation of the ductus thoracicus may be considered for the management of this complication. We present the mediastinal chylous fluid accu-mulation in a male patient who underwent revision due to bleeding on postoper-ative second day after coronary artery bypass surgery.