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Introduction The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic has been a worldwide challenge, and efforts to “flatten the curve,” including restrictions imposed by policymakers and medical societies, have forced a reduction in the number of procedures performed in the Brazilian Health Care System. The aim of this study is to evaluate the outcomes of coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) from 2008 to 2020 in the SUS and to assess the impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic in the number of procedures and death rate of CABG performed in 2020 through the database DATASUS. Methods This study is based on publicly available material obtained from DATASUS, the Brazilian Ministry of Health's data processing system, on numbers of surgical procedures and death rates. Only isolated CABG procedures were included in our study. We used the TabNet software from the DATASUS website to generate reports. Results We identified 281,760 CABG procedures performed from January 2008 to December 2020. The average number of procedures until the end of 2019 was of 22,104. During 2020 there was a 25% reduction CABG procedures, to 16,501. There was an increase in the national death rate caused by a statistical significant increase in death rates in Brazil's Southeast and Central‐west regions. Conclusion The COVID‐19 pandemic remains a global challenge for Brazil's health care system. During the year of 2020 there was a reduction in access to CABG related to an increase in the number of COVID‐19 cases. There was also an increase in the national CABG death rate.

Background Brazil is an upper middle‐income country in South America with the world's sixth largest population. Despite great advances in health‐care services and cardiac surgical care in both its public and private health systems, little is known on the volume, outcomes, and trends of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) in Brazil's public health system. Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the outcome of CABG on the public health system from January 2008 to December 2017 through the database DATASUS. Methods This study is based on publicly available material obtained from DATASUS, the Brazilian Ministry of Health's data processing system, on numbers of surgical procedures, death rates, length of stay, and costs. Only isolated CABG procedures were included in our study. We used the TabNet software from the DATASUS website to generate reports. The χ2 test was used to compare death rates. A p < .05 was considered statistically significant. Results We identified 226,697 CABG procedures performed from January 2008 to December 2017. The overall in‐hospital mortality over the 10‐year period was 5.7%. We observed statistically significant differences in death rates between the five Brazilian macro‐regions. Death rates by state ranged from 2.6% to 13.1%. The national average mortality rate remained stable over the course of time. Conclusion Over 10 years, a high volume of CABG was performed in the Brazilian Public Health System, with significant differences in mortality, number of procedures, and distribution of surgeries by region. Future databases involving all centers that perform CABG and carry out risk‐adjusted analysis will help improve Brazilian results and enable policymakers to adopt appropriate health‐care policies for greater transparency and accountability.

Increased understanding about the mechanisms of coronary thrombosis in humans has been limited by the lack of imaging modalities with resolution sufficient to characterize fibrous cap tissue and determine its thickness in vivo. Intravascular optical coherence tomography (IOCT) provides images with micrometer axial (10-15µm) and lateral resolution (40µm), enabling detailed visualization of micro-structural changes of the arterial wall. This article describes a fully automated method for identification and quantification of fibrous tissue in IOCT human coronary images based on spatial-frequency analysis by means Short-Time Fourier transform. Forty IOCT frames from nine IOCT in-vivo datasets were annotated by an expert and used to evaluate the proposed fibrous tissue characterization method.

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