Over a 19-month period (from November 1985 to June 1987), 18 patients underwent open coronary endarterectomy combined with vein patch reconstruction and internal mammary artery (IMA) grafting. All 18 patients had disabling angina and severe, diffuse coronary atherosclerosis that prevented revascularization by conventional means. Thirteen underwent open endarterectomy of the left anterior descending coronary artery, and the remaining five had open endarterectomy of the right coronary artery. All patients received additional bypass grafts to other coronary arteries (2.6 grafts per patient). There was no operative mortality, but one patient had a perioperative myocardial infarction that was unrelated to the open endarterectomy. Postoperative angiography in 16 cases showed that only one of the grafts to the endarterectomized artery was occluded. After a mean follow-up of 8.7 months, all the patients but one were angina-free. No late deaths occurred. Although the long-term clinical results and graft patency have yet to be evaluated, the early results of this series encourage us to continue using this technique in patients whose diffuse coronary artery disease is untreatable by conventional means.