Patients requiring surgery to treat coronary artery disease benefit from a highly skilled and innovative team of cardiac surgeons, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses and other health care professionals. At the Center for Coronary Disease, the goal is to provide patients with the longest lasting and least invasive operation possible. During coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG also called "cabbage") a blood vessel is taken from another area of the body, such as the chest wall, an arm or leg, and grafted or attached directly onto the artery to "bypass" the blockage.
The surgeons at the Center for Coronary Disease at the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute use arteries as often as possible to create the bypass because, research has shown that artery bypass grafts remain open longer than vein grafts. Retrieving blood vessels used to create the bypass is performed using an endoscope. This instrument allows the vessel to be removed with about a 1 inch incision. This minimally invasive approach results in less pain, faster healing and a reduced chance of infection. Another innovative surgical technique is the pain relief pump to minimize pain after surgery. The pump delivers non narcotic numbing medication directly to the chest incision site through a thin plastic catheter. This not only results in less pain and less use of narcotics, but also allows for a quicker recovery.
New surgical techniques eliminating the use of a heart lung machine (called beating heart or off pump surgery) are now performed routinely in select patients. Many other patient care innovations are being developed to ensure patients receive the best possible and most durable operation at the minimum risk.
Contact
For more
information regarding coronary bypass surgery and the treatments
available through the Center for Coronary Disease, call the Bluhm
Cardiovascular Institute at (866) 662-8467, or request an appointment online.
