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Tools & Medical Procedures for Heart Surgery

Modern heart surgery can boast an impressive array of tools and strategies to treat many health conditions that might otherwise prove fatal. Common procedures include coronary bypasses, valve surgeries and implantation of pacemakers. While larger surgeries still involve opening the chest cavity, cutting-edge technologies can help surgeons use smaller incisions in less invasive procedures.

  1. Bypass Surgeries

    • According to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), more than half a million people in the U.S. alone opt to have coronary artery bypass grafting, or CABG. This bypass procedure involves grafting a blood vessel from another part of the body to a blocked coronary (heart) artery, allowing blood to flow freely through the blood vessel once more. When CABG is not an option for the patient, surgeons can use lasers to carve new channels into the muscular walls of the heart, giving blood another pathway from the heart chamber to the muscle.

    Heart Valve Surgeries

    • The heart contains valves that open and close to control the direction of blood flow into arteries. The American Heart Association (AHA) explains that, when heart valves fail to open or close properly, they can cause backward leakage into the heart, reducing efficiency. Surgeons may repair the faulty valve, or if necessary they can replace it entirely with an animal valve or an artificial device.

    Arrhythmia Surgeries

    • Arrhythmia means the heart beats too fast, too slowly, or irregularly. Surgeons have a couple of different tools they can implant to correct this problem. A pacemaker senses abnormal heart rates and corrects them by sending electrical signals to the heart muscle. An implantable cardioverter defribrillator, or ICD, uses similar technology to that of a pacemaker, but it corrects irregular heart rhythms instead of abnormal speeds. In addition to these two surgeries, maze surgery, in which the surgeon carves a "maze" or pattern into the heart to help guide its signals, may be an option for certain types of arrhythmia, and the AHA says the procedure is new but promising.

    Aneurism and Transplant Surgeries

    • According to the AHA, an aneurism (a weakness in a section of the heart or an artery) can cause the affected area to bulge or even burst under the pressure of blood flow. Surgeons use a graft or an artificial patch to strengthen the weak section. If, however, the heart is too weak or diseased to continue functioning, the patient must receive a heart transplant. Transplant surgery requires the patient's heart to stop beating for the course of the surgery. To achieve this without harming the patient, surgeons rely on a device called a heart-lung bypass machine. This machine regulates breathing and blood flow for the patient.

    New Approaches

    • In most of the procedures listed above, according to the NHLBI, the surgical team must open the chest and expose the heart; hence the term "open-heart" surgery. In some procedures, however, newer and less invasive approaches now enable patients to recover faster and with less pain. Instead of opening the entire chest, surgeons work through tiny incisions, sometimes with the aid of computer-assisted robotic arms. The NHLBI claims that these newer procedures work well for bypasses, valve surgeries or pacemaker installations.

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