Coronary heart disease causes one out of every five deaths in the United States, making it the single largest killer of Americans. While other treatment alternatives exist, studies show that coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery achieves the best long-term patient outcome for coronary heart disease as measured by survival rate and need for re-intervention.

In 2007, an estimated 400,000 CABG procedures were performed in the United States, each requiring approximately five anastomoses, often considered the most critical step of the surgery.

During CABG surgery, a surgeon removes a small part of a blood vessel from another part of the body, usually a vein from the leg, and surgically attaches it across an area of severe narrowing or blockage, thus bypassing the blockage. The blood is rerouted through the healthy vessel and blood flow is restored to the heart muscle.

The current method of performing an anastomosis in a CABG procedure utilizes technically demanding, tedious and time-consuming hand-sewn sutures to connect a bypass graft vessel to the aorta and to small diameter coronary vessels. Cardica's C-Port^® and PAS-Port^® systems allow surgeons to connect the bypass graft reliably in about two minutes*, compared to ten to 15 minutes for a hand-sewn suture.

*Data on file at Cardica.