With regard to clinical characteristics such as body mass index, smoking habit, hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, and history of myocardial infarct, the two groups did not show significant differences and were comparable (Table 1). The groups were also similar with regard to number of bypass grafts, cardiopulmonary bypass time, cross-clamp time, flow, atrial fibrillation, inotrope usage, time of endotracheal intubation and mortality rate (Table 2).