Bypass Surgery

So once you’ve had a cardiac cath and the blockages in your heart has been defined and it’s been determined that it cannot be fixed with stents, you are then referred to a cardiac surgeon for bypass surgery. So this is open heart surgery where they attempt to bypass these blocked vessels. They get veins either from your legs or an artery from your chest that’s sewn over the blocked arteries that you have to allow blood to bypass that area of blockage. So bypass surgeries is usually recommended in patients who are not good candidates for angioplasty and stent placements. So these tend to be patients who are sicker, have multiple comorbidities, many more arteries blocked, simultaneously, or your heart function is depressed.