Complications of bypass surgery

Coronary bypass surgery

Bypass surgery is one of the solutions in cases of serious heart conditions and diseases in which the blood flow is disrupted due to blocked or narrowed arteries weakened heart muscle or some other problem. This surgery procedure is very frequently done when medications and other ways of the treatment do not give any positive results and in order to be performed, first a healthy blood vessel has to be taken either from leg, arm, abdomen or chest. Then that vessel has to be connected to other arteries in the heart so that the blood can avoid the blocked or diseased area of the heart, and flow regularly around it. However not every patient is a good candidate for this procedure. Only if they have very strong pain in the chest that is caused by the narrowing of the artery, and only if stenting or angioplasty are not solutions which can provide a long-term relief, bypass surgery is recommended. The same goes for the patients in which the left main artery is damaged severely or for those who have already had some sort of the heart-related surgery and it proved to be an unsuccessful solution. However people should be aware that this surgery will not provide them with cure and that medicines will have to be used even after it since the coronary bypass surgery does not treat the underlying causes of the heart condition.

Risk factors and possible complications

Despite the fact that this surgery is generally done by the professionals and that all the measures of precaution have to be taken, in order to prevent possible complications sometimes such complications are simply inevitable. Despite the fact that according to the statistics the risk of the fatal outcome is very low some of these complication may cause the death. The most frequently reported are bleeding, infections of the wound irregular heart rhythm or arrhythmia and stroke. However it is possible that the patient will experience kidney failure after this surgery or even the loss of memory though it is a temporary problem in the most of the cases. People who are at risk much more than others are those who already have some other serious medical condition or those in which this procedure is done as an emergency. This is why it can be of great importance to talk to the doctor about everything that the patient is interested in before undergoing this surgery.