PhD student Justin Ren presents at prestigious international cardiac surgery conferences

Justin Ren, a PhD student from the Department of Surgery, Melbourne Medical School and Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH), has had multiple acceptances for oral presentations at three prestigious international cardiac surgery conferences – The American Association of Thoracic Surgeons (AATS) in Boston, USA; the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) in Ottawa, Canada, and the European Heart Society (EHS) in Barcelona, Spain.

The topics covered include total arterial revascularisation for coronary artery bypass surgery, where the RMH, and other University of Melbourne-affiliated hospitals are the world leaders. Postoperative angiograms at RMH revealed no difference in late patency and perfect patency for the radial artery compared to the internal mammary artery - a ground-breaking finding. Analysis of multiple arterial grafting reveals benefit for more arterial grafts. Exclusive use of arterial grafts has the greatest survival benefit with a recent paper submitted reporting more than 127,000 propensity-score-matched patients from multiple international jurisdictions.