It is done with an open heart. The main types of surgical intervention on the heart. Briefly about heart valves: what are they and why are they needed


Heart surgery is performed only when other methods of therapy cannot help the patient's condition. Heart surgery can prevent death in a patient, but the risk of an adverse outcome remains quite high.

Despite the fact that cardiac surgery does not stand still and develops, heart surgery is very difficult to perform. The best specialists in cardiac surgery are engaged in it. But even this important fact cannot shield the operated person from complex consequences.

Complications in the postoperative period can even lead to death.

Indications for surgery

As mentioned earlier, cardiac surgery is used in cases where there are no other options to save the patient's life. Heart surgery requires a very serious approach.

Heart transplantation is considered the most complex and serious surgical intervention. The operation is carried out under the strict supervision of highly qualified specialists.

Indications for heart surgery of any complexity are as follows:

  • transient development of ailments of the cardiovascular system;
  • in the absence of results with drug treatment;
  • late referral to a medical facility.

Heart surgery helps to improve the general condition of the patient and eliminate the symptoms of a tormenting disease.

Cardiac cavity surgery is performed only after a complete diagnostic study and an accurate diagnosis by a cardio specialist.

Methods of surgical interventions


What are heart surgeries?

This is a pretty important question if you are going to have this major surgery. You will also need to know how the operation goes and how it is done.

This is necessary in order to make, perhaps, the main decision in your life, on which all future fate will depend.

Closed Interventions

This is a heart operation that does not affect the organ itself. It is done without touching the heart. For its implementation, there is no need for special equipment, except for such as the instruments of the surgeon.

The heart cavity does not "open". That is why it is called "closed".

Such an intervention is performed at the initial stage of the development of the disease, when the patient's condition can only be improved by operations.

Open Interventions

There is also open surgery. This type of operation requires the opening of the heart cavities in order to eradicate the existing pathology.

Open heart surgery is performed using a special device - heart-lung machine or heart-lung machine.

With an open intervention, the cavities are open, the heart and pulmonary organs are disconnected from blood circulation. This makes it possible to intervene on a "dry" organ.

All blood through the vein goes to specialized surgical equipment. There they pass through artificial lungs, enriched with oxygen and release carbon dioxide, transforming from the blood of a vein into an arterial one. Then it is driven by a special pump into the aorta of the operated person, in other words, into the systemic circulation.

Innovative techniques help to create all the "insides" of the equipment (also an artificial lung), with which the patient's blood comes into contact, "disposable", that is, once for one person. This will reduce the possible disastrous consequences.

Today, the heart-lung machine helps to stop the functioning of the heart organ and lungs for several hours. Thereby allowing to carry out the hardest operations of open character.

X-ray surgical interventions


This type of intervention began to be used quite recently. But thanks to innovative equipment, they occupy an important place in heart surgery.

With the help of a special catheter, surgical instruments are inserted into a strip section of the cardiac organ, or into the opening of the vessel. Further, with the help of the pressure that the device creates, the valves of the abdominal incisions are opened. They amplify or distort the partitions, or vice versa, using the device, the distortion is eliminated.

Special tubes are introduced into the lumen of the necessary vessel, thereby helping to slightly open it.

The process during such operations is carefully monitored by a special computer and control is made over each action. Thanks to this, operations are performed with less risk of injury and with a greater likelihood of a favorable outcome.

If you have had an X-ray surgery, the effectiveness of it is higher.

Action plan before surgery

Before surgery on the cardiac organ, preparation is necessary. If you have enough time, at least a few days or weeks, you need to take care of your body. Eat healthy, nutrient-rich foods.

Get plenty of rest, walk in the fresh air, do physical exercises that the treating specialist recommended to you.

Proper nutrition


Try to eat only natural foods every day and more than once, even if you have no appetite. Your body needs to consume plenty of proteins, vitamins and minerals.

Thanks to a healthy diet, the surgical intervention itself and the rehabilitation period are more favorable.

Relaxation

Do not force your body to overwork before surgery. The more you rest, the stronger and stronger your body will become.

If you want to visit relatives or invite you to visit, say that you need to gain strength before a difficult process. Relatives will always understand you and will not be offended.

Nicotine use

It's no secret for everyone that smoking affects negatively even the body of a completely healthy person. What can we say about patients with cardiac pathology.

Nicotine affects the heart in the following negative way: it develops arteriosclerosis, increases pressure in the blood vessels, and makes the heart vessels tighten. It also narrows blood-forming arteries and increases the concentration of mucous fluid in the pulmonary organs.

This leads to more difficult adaptation after surgery.

rehabilitation period


After a surgical intervention on the cardiac organ, if an insufficient amount of time has passed, it is even forbidden to get out of the ward bed. The entire rehabilitation period, the patient is in the intensive care unit.

This department is intended for patients who have a risk of death.

A special dietary diet plays a huge role in rehabilitation. His attending specialist appoints individually for each patient. You can start eating only with lean gruels and vegetable broths, but after a few days the diet increases significantly.

After the patient is transferred to a regular ward, as a rule, the attending physician will allow the use of the following products:

  • cereals from coarse grinding (barley, barley groats, unpolished rice). You can also include oatmeal in the diet 2-3 times a week;
  • dairy production: fat-free curd mass, cheese with a fat content of not more than 20%;
  • vegetables and fruits: fresh, steamed and in various salads;
  • small pieces of boiled chicken, turkey and rabbit. As well as homemade steamed cutlets;
  • various varieties of fish: herring, salmon, capelin, etc.;
  • all soups without fried ingredients and without fat content.

Under no circumstances should the following foods be consumed.

May God grant everyone to live a long life so that the surgeon's scalpel never touches his heart. However, not always cardiac surgery can be replaced by therapy.

When is surgery necessary?

  1. When conservative therapy does not give the desired result.
  2. When, despite all the ongoing treatment, the patient's condition continues to deteriorate.
  3. When there are severe congenital heart defects, severe arrhythmia, cardiomyopathy.

By urgency, cardiosurgical operations are emergency and planned.

  1. Emergencies are carried out when a person's life is in serious danger. This happens when a myocardial infarction occurs, a blood clot suddenly breaks off, or aortic dissection begins. They do not tolerate delay in surgery when the heart is injured. The consequences of delay are severe.
  2. Planned are carried out in accordance with the developed plan for the correction of the patient's health. The date of the operation may be postponed depending on the circumstances. For example: with a cold, to avoid additional stress on the heart, or when the pressure suddenly dropped.

Surgical intervention differs in the technique of execution. There are such types of heart operations:

  • with the opening of the chest;
  • without opening the chest.
open heart surgery

Chest opening operations

Such surgical intervention is used in especially severe cases, when full accessibility of the heart is required during the operation.

Opening of the chest is performed with such pathologies:

  • tetralogy of Fallot (the so-called congenital heart disease with four serious violations of the anatomical structure);
  • serious anomalies of intracardiac partitions, valves, aorta and coronary arteries;
  • heart tumors.

The patient arrives at the hospital one day before the operation. Passes inspection, gives written consent. Be sure to wash with antibacterial soap and shave your hair. Where do you shave your body hair? The hair will be shaved at the site of the proposed incision. If you are going to have a coronary bypass surgery, you will have to shave your legs and groin. In the case of a heart valve replacement, it is necessary to shave the hair in the lower abdomen and in the groin area.

The surgery is performed under general anesthesia. To gain access to the heart, the surgeon opens the chest of the person being operated on. The patient is connected to an artificial lung ventilation apparatus, the heart stops for a while and surgical manipulations are performed with the organ.

How long the operation takes depends on the severity of the pathology. On average, several hours.


Tetralogy of Fallot

Open heart surgery has two advantages.

  1. The surgeon has full access to the patient's heart.
  2. Such a surgical intervention is possible without state-of-the-art medical equipment.

However, there are also significant drawbacks.

  1. Surgical manipulations with the heart last several hours, which leads to fatigue of the operating team, during the operation there is a higher probability of making an erroneous action.
  2. Opening the chest is fraught with various injuries.
  3. There is a noticeable scar after heart surgery.
  4. Various complications are not excluded:
  • myocardial infarction,
  • thromboembolism,
  • bleeding,
  • infections;
  • coma after surgery.
  1. A long recovery is required with significant limitations in the patient's activities.

In most cases, when surgery is performed with an opening of the chest, disability is given after heart surgery, as after a heart attack.

What operations and under what pathologies are performed on the open heart?

Pathologies of the coronary arteries

Coronary artery bypass grafting is done in case of serious atherosclerotic lesions of the coronary arteries, which led to a severe form of coronary heart disease. The essence of shunting is to create a bypass for blood flow to the heart using a shunt, for which an artery or vein taken from the patient is used. For example: mammary coronary artery bypass grafting (MCB) is performed using the internal mammary (mammary) artery.


Operation Ross

Heart valve defects

Today, valves made from the patient's biological material are used to replace damaged valves.

  1. The Ross procedure involves using the patient's own valvular pulmonary artery to replace a diseased aortic valve. An implant is placed in place of the pulmonary valve. Eliminates complications associated with rejection of a valve made of foreign material. Made for both adults and children.
  2. The Ozaki operation involves the use of the patient's own tissue. Only in this case, the replacement of the aortic valve is performed with a valve made from the patient's pericardium. Complications with valve rejection are not observed for the same reason.

The operation on the heart, which at one time was compared with the first manned flight into space, is exactly 50 years old. It is very pleasant that our surgeon Vasily Kolesov conceived and executed it. Now it is one of the most common procedures in the world to prevent a heart attack and bears the name of its developer.

"The Soviet surgeon dared to raise his hand on his heart" - in 1964 this news outraged the entire world medical community. No one believed that coronary heart disease could be treated with surgery. Numerous experiments on animals ended unsuccessfully. But Vasily Ivanovich Kolesov, a professor at the Leningrad Medical University, proves that operating on a healthy heart in dogs and a diseased heart in humans is not the same thing, and he decides on a bold experiment.

Stanislav Pudyakov then assisted the surgeon. He recalls: a 44-year-old patient was tormented by severe pain in the region of the heart.

“His idea, if compared historically, is similar to the thoughts of Tsiolkovsky, who said that tomorrow we will be on the moon. They didn’t believe him until they really flew. And until Vasily Ivanovich did this first operation, no one believed in it” - says Stanislav Pudyakov.

The surgeon operated on a beating heart, which was also hard to believe. No one had done this before Kolesov, neither in our country nor in the world. Moreover, the doctor literally felt the sore spot with his hands. The equipment for diagnosing heart diseases simply did not exist then.

To restore the normal blood supply to the heart, Kolesov singled out the internal thoracic artery and sewed it to the coronary artery below the narrowing caused by the so-called atherosclerotic plaque. The blood flow went around, the patient was saved from a heart attack.

After the operation, people quickly returned to normal life and forgot about the pills forever. About operations that saved people from heart attacks and pains in the heart, they started talking abroad as a sensation. American magazines wrote about Kolesov: "Pioneer of coronary surgery."

“There were confessions among colleagues, among foreigners. A lot of Americans, Germans, French came, they looked at these operations with great curiosity and really wanted to continue what was started here,” says surgeon Alexander Nemkov.

Vasily Kolesov immediately warned: it would not be easy for young surgeons to repeat this. From now on, operations must be performed on a stopped heart. The advice was regarded as a guide to action. In 1967, American surgeons put them on stream.

The method of treatment of coronary heart disease, proposed by Vasily Ivanovich Kolesov, is considered the most effective after 50 years. Operations are performed by the best cardiac surgeons in clinics around the world. This is aerobatics, because, in fact, doctors must restart the main human organ.

“Speaking specifically about the operation of Vasily Ivanovich Kolesov, it is now being performed widely on a beating heart. What he did is incredible. The range of suture material that we use has changed, the needle holders that we use have changed incredibly. We use special magnifying lenses and we see this artery magnificently, which can be a millimeter, a millimeter and a half,” says surgeon Leo Bokeria.

Like half a century ago, coronary heart disease is the most common disease in the world. Now we can say with confidence that doctors have learned to deal with it. Thanks to the revolutionary method of Vasily Kolesov, even the most difficult patients can be saved.

Surgical interventions on the heart are necessary in the treatment of many pathologies of the cardiovascular system that are not amenable to standard drug therapy. With the implementation of surgical treatment, it becomes possible to improve the general condition of the patient and prolong his life. But depending on the pathology, there are different heart operations, which differ in their technique.

    Show all

    Operations classification

    Cardiac surgery is aimed at the treatment of cardiac pathologies through indirect or direct effects on this organ. There are such types of heart operations:

    • Closed, while the heart itself is not affected. Such operations are performed outside the heart, so they do not need to use special equipment, with the exception of classical surgical instruments. The cavities of the heart remain closed, hence the name of this category.
    • Open, they require opening the cavities of the heart, which requires the use of special equipment, such as a heart-lung machine. At the time when such a surgical intervention is performed, the heart and lungs are not functioning, which allows the specialist to work with a stopped heart.
    • X-ray surgery, in which special catheters and devices attached to them are used, they are inserted into the cavity of the heart or the lumen of the vessel to correct the defect. The progress of such an operation is controlled using the monitor screen.

    In addition, the types of surgical interventions in cardiac surgery are classified according to the patient's condition and type of defect, as well as the approach to treatment.

    According to the patient's condition and the type of defect, there are:

    • Emergency operations - when you need to act immediately after the diagnosis has become clear, otherwise the pathology threatens the patient's life.
    • Urgent - they do not require a lightning-fast reaction and a quick start of action. They are prepared for several days, but not longer, due to the high risks of complications or death.
    • Planned - interventions, the implementation of which is desirable, but not essential in the near future. They are prescribed by surgeons after consultation with patients.

    Depending on what approach requires surgical treatment:

    • Radical - they are aimed at the complete elimination of vices.
    • Palliative - they are additional or auxiliary, their goal is to improve the patient's condition or prepare him for a radical intervention.

    RF ablation

    Such surgical intervention as radiofrequency ablation refers to X-ray surgical procedures. It is carried out to improve the condition of the patient suffering from heart failure and arrhythmia, and is characterized by low rates of side effects and complications.

    Manipulations during the operation are carried out with special catheters, which are introduced to the patient under local anesthesia. The place of introduction of the catheter, remote from the heart itself, therefore, local anesthesia is carried out at the site of the future introduction of the catheter. In most cases, it is injected into the inguinal vein or femoral artery. After entering the organ, the catheters give electrical impulses to restore the heart rhythm.

    Due to such a supply of impulses that eliminate a small area of ​​​​cardiac tissue that causes pathological excitation of the myocardium, the technique received a second name - cauterization of the heart.

    Valve prosthetics

    Prosthetic heart valves are used when a valve is insufficiency or stenosis, which interferes with the normal passage of blood through it. Valve replacement can be performed during open surgery, endovascular or mini-access.

    In the first case, the patient under general anesthesia is treated with the anterior surface of the chest, the sternum is dissected longitudinally, and the pericardial cavity is opened. To disconnect the heart from blood circulation, the patient is connected to a heart-lung machine, and the myocardium is systematically treated with cold saline during the entire operation in order to avoid its hypoxia.

    To install the prosthesis, a longitudinal incision is made, opening the cavity of the heart, the modified structures of the valve are removed, it is replaced with an artificial one, and the myocardium is sutured. After that, the surgeon "starts" the heart with an electrical impulse or by performing a direct heart massage, and turns off the heart-lung machine.

    After examining the postoperative view of the heart, pericardium and pleura, blood is removed from the cavities and the surgical wound is sutured in layers.

    With endovascular surgery, there is no need to "disconnect" the heart from blood circulation. It is carried out through the leg, namely by introducing a catheter with implantable valves into the femoral artery or vein. After fragments of the damaged valve are destroyed and removed, a prosthesis is put in its place, which straightens itself, having a flexible stent frame.

    If the option with a mini-access was chosen, then the surgeon makes an incision 2-5.5 cm long on the anterior wall of the sternum in the area of ​​the projection of the apex of the heart. Then, through the apex of the heart, a catheter is inserted into the organ, advancing it to the affected valve, and replacing it.

    In the case of valve replacement, there are several types of implants:

    • Mechanical - they are made of metal or plastic. When choosing such an implant, the patient in the future will need to constantly take blood thinners.
    • Biological - they consist of animal tissues and do not require further use of drugs, but after a few decades they need to be replaced.

    Installing a pacemaker

    In the event that the patient suffers from heart failure, cardiomyopathy and cardiac arrhythmias, the specialist may prescribe a minor operation to install a pacemaker.

    The technique for performing such an operation is simple. On the right or left under the left clavicle, local anesthesia is performed with novocaine or lidocaine, after which an incision is made in the skin and subclavian vein to insert a conductor into it, and through it into the superior vena cava and into the heart - an electrode. When the tip of the electrode enters the cavity of the right atrium, the doctor chooses a convenient place for optimal stimulation of the heart muscle, during the search he constantly records ECG changes. When a place is found, the electrode is fixed in the myocardial wall from the inside with the help of antennae or a corkscrew-like attachment. After fixation, it is required to hem a titanium case under the patient's arm, which is installed in the thickness of the pectoral muscle on the left. The wound is sutured and an aseptic bandage is applied.

    Coronary artery bypass grafting

    Coronary artery bypass grafting is a common heart surgery. It is prescribed when atherosclerotic plaques accumulate on the inner walls of the coronary vessels that feed the heart, disrupting blood flow. In addition, indications can be:

    • Stable angina 3-4 functional class.
    • Acute coronary syndrome.
    • Acute myocardial infarction within the first 4–6 hours of onset of pain.
    • Severe ischemia without pain.

    Before the operation, the patient is intravenously administered sedatives and tranquilizers, and the intervention itself is carried out under general anesthesia. Operative access is done by dissection of the sternum or from a mini-access, making an incision in the intercostal space on the left in the area of ​​the projection of the heart. Manipulation can be carried out both with the connection of the patient to the heart-lung machine, and without it.

    The aorta is clamped and connected to the machine, then a vessel is isolated, which will become a bypass. This vessel is brought to the affected coronary artery and its other end is sutured to the aorta. As a result, from the aorta, bypassing the area affected by plaques, the blood will go to the coronary arteries without difficulty.

    Depending on how many arteries supplying the heart are affected and at what intervals, the number of shunts can vary from 2 to 5.

    When the shunts are fixed, metal staples are applied to the edges of the sternum, soft tissues are sutured and an aseptic dressing is applied. In addition, drainage is removed from the pericardial cavity so that there is an outflow of hemorrhagic fluid.

    Operations Glenn and Ross

    The Glenn operation is otherwise known as a bidirectional cavopulmonary connection. In this case, anastomosis of the upper part of the superior vena cava with the right pulmonary artery is performed according to the "end to side" principle.

    Ross surgery is the replacement of a patient's damaged aortic valve with his pulmonary valve, and the removed pulmonary valve is replaced with a prosthesis.

Operations on the heart and blood vessels are performed by such a branch of medicine as cardiac surgery.

With the help of cardiac surgeons, many vascular and cardiac diseases can be effectively treated, thereby significantly prolonging the life of the patient.

Operations on the heart and blood vessels can significantly improve the general well-being of the patient.

They should be performed only after a thorough diagnosis and preparation of the patient.

It is very important to follow all the instructions of the specialist exactly.

Regardless of what kind of disease was detected in a person, there are the following general indications for operations on the heart and blood vessels:

  1. Rapid deterioration of the patient's condition and progression of the underlying disease of the heart or blood vessels.
  2. The lack of positive dynamics from the use of traditional drug therapy, that is, when taking pills no longer helps a person to maintain his condition in a normal way.
  3. The presence of acute signs of deterioration of the underlying myocardial disease, which cannot be eliminated by conventional analgesics or antispasmodics.
  4. The neglect of the underlying disease, in which the patient hesitated to contact the doctor, which led to very severe symptoms of the disease.

These procedures are indicated for patients with heart defects (regardless of whether they are congenital or acquired). Moreover, thanks to current techniques, this disease can be treated even in newborn babies, thereby providing them with a healthy life.

The next common indication is myocardial ischemia. In this case, surgery may be required when the underlying disease is aggravated by a heart attack. In this condition, the sooner surgery is performed, the greater the chance that the person will survive.

A significant indication for the need for surgical intervention can be acute heart failure, which provokes abnormal contraction of the myocardial ventricles. At the same time, it is important that the patient prepares for the operation in advance (to avoid postoperative complications in the form of a blood clot).

Often, surgery is required for myocardial valve disease, which was triggered by trauma or an inflammatory process. Rarely, other causes contribute to its appearance.

A serious reason for the urgent intervention of surgeons is the diagnosis of narrowing of the coronary valve of the artery, as well as endocarditis of infectious origin.

Additional conditions that may require a person to have myocardial surgery include:

  • Severe aortic aneurysm, which may result from trauma or be congenital.
  • Rupture of the ventricle of the heart, because of which the blood flow was disturbed.
  • Various types of arrhythmias that can be eliminated by inserting or replacing an already installed pacemaker. They are commonly used for atrial fibrillation and bradycardia.
  • Diagnosis of an obstruction in the myocardium in the form of tamponade, due to which the heart cannot pump the required volume of blood normally. This condition can occur under the influence of viral infections, acute tuberculosis and heart attack.
  • Acute insufficiency of the left ventricles of the myocardium.

Cardiac surgery is not always necessary for the above indications. Each case is individual and only the attending physician can decide what is best for a particular patient - traditional drug therapy or a planned (urgent) operation.

In addition, it should be noted that heart surgery may be required in case of exacerbation of the underlying disease, as well as if the first surgical intervention did not give the expected results. In this case, the patient may need to repeat manipulation. Its cost and preparation features (diet, medication) depend on the complexity of the operation.

Surgical interventions can be practiced both on the open myocardium and on the closed one, when the heart and its cavity are not completely affected. The first type of operations involves dissection of the chest and connecting the patient to artificial respiration equipment.

During open-type operations, surgeons artificially stop the heart for a while, so that within a few hours they can perform the necessary surgical procedures on the organ. These interventions are considered very dangerous and traumatic, but even very complex myocardial diseases can be eliminated with their help.

Closed type operations are more secure. They are usually used to correct minor heart and vascular defects.

There are the following most common types of myocardial operations, which are most often practiced in cardiac surgery:

  • Installation of artificial valves.
  • Operations according to the method of Glenn and Ross.
  • Coronary artery bypass grafting and stenting of arteries.
  • Ablation of radiofrequency type.

An operation called radiofrequency ablation is a low-traumatic procedure that allows you to achieve significant improvements in heart failure and various types of arrhythmias. It rarely causes side effects and is well tolerated by patients.

RA is performed using special catheters that are inserted under X-ray control. The patient is then given local anesthesia. During this operation, a catheter is inserted into the organ and, thanks to electrical impulses, the normal heart rhythm is restored to the person.

The next type of surgery is prosthetic heart valves. This intervention is very often practiced, since such a pathology as myocardial valve insufficiency is extremely common.

It should be noted that in the event of a severe failure in the patient's heart rhythm, he may need to install a special device - a pacemaker. It is needed to normalize the rhythm of the heart.

When prosthetic heart valves can be used the following types of implants:

  1. Mechanical prostheses that are made of metal or plastic. They serve for a very long time (for several decades), however, they require a person to constantly take drugs to thin the blood, because due to the introduction of a foreign object in the body, a tendency to form blood clots actively develops.
  2. Biological implants are made from animal tissues. They are very durable and do not require special preparations. Despite this, patients after a couple of decades often require a second operation.

Glenn and Ross operations are commonly used to treat children with congenital myocardial defects. The essence of these interventions is to create a special connection for the pulmonary artery. After this operation, the child can live for a long time, with little or no need for maintenance therapy.

During the Ross operation, the patient is replaced by a diseased myocardial valve with a healthy one, which will be removed from his own pulmonary valve.

Cardiac bypass surgery: indications and conduct

Coronary artery bypass grafting is a surgical intervention on the heart, during which an additional vessel is sewn in order to restore the disturbed blood supply in the clogged blood arteries.

Cardiac bypass surgery is practiced when the narrowed vessels of the patient are no longer amenable to drug treatment and the blood cannot circulate normally in the heart, causing ischemic attacks.

A direct indication for cardiac bypass surgery is acute coronary aortic stenosis. Most often, a neglected form of atherosclerosis leads to its development, which contributes to clogging of blood vessels with cholesterol plaques.

Due to vasoconstriction, blood cannot circulate normally and deliver oxygen to myocardial cells. This leads to its defeat and the risk of a heart attack.

Today, heart vessel bypass surgery can be performed both on a beating heart and on an artificially stopped one. At the same time, it should be noted that if shunting is done on a working myocardium, then the likelihood of postoperative complications is much higher than when performing a procedure on a stopped myocardium.

The course of this operation consists in blocking the main aorta and implanting artificial vessels into the affected coronary arteries. Usually, a vessel in the leg is used for shunting. It is used as a biological implant.

Contraindications to this surgical intervention may be an existing pacemaker or an artificial valve in the heart, the functions of which may be impaired during such an operation. In general, the need for shunting is determined individually by the doctor for each individual patient, based on the diagnostic data and the patient's symptoms.

After bypass surgery, the recovery period is usually fast, especially if the patient does not have any complications after the procedure. Within a week after the operation, the patient must comply with bed rest. Until the stitches are removed, a person needs to do wound dressings daily.

After ten days, a person can get out of bed and begin to perform simple movements of physiotherapy exercises in order to restore the body.

After the wound has completely healed, the patient is advised to go swimming and walk regularly in the fresh air.

It should be noted that the wound after shunting is not sewn with threads, but with special metal staples.. This is justified by the fact that the dissection falls on a large bone, so it needs to grow together as carefully as possible and ensure peace.

To make it easier for a person to move around after the operation, he is allowed to use special medical support bandages. They look like a corset and perfectly support the seams.

After surgery, due to blood loss, a person may experience anemia, which will be accompanied by weakness and dizziness. To eliminate this condition, the patient is advised to eat right and enrich his diet with beets, nuts, apples and other fruits.

To reduce the likelihood of re-constriction of blood vessels, alcohol, fatty and fried foods should be completely excluded from the menu.

The operation of stenting of the vessels of the heart: indications and features of the conduct

Arterial stenting is a low-traumatic angioplasty procedure, which involves the imposition of a stent into the lumen of the affected vessels.

The stent itself is similar to a conventional spring. It is injected into the vessel after it has been artificially dilated.

Indications for cardiac stenting surgery are:

  1. IHD (ischemic heart disease), which leads to impaired blood circulation and oxygen starvation of the myocardium.
  2. Myocardial infarction.
  3. Clogging of blood vessels with cholesterol plaques, which lead to a narrowing of their lumen.

Additional contraindications to this procedure are the patient's individual intolerance to iodine, which is invariably used during stenting, as well as the case when the total size of the diseased artery is less than 2.5 mm (in this case, the surgeon simply cannot install the stent).

An operation is performed to stent the vessels of the heart by introducing a special balloon that will expand the lumen of the diseased vessel. Further, a filter is installed in this place, which prevents subsequent blood clots and stroke.

After that, a stent is inserted into the vessel; it will support the vessel from narrowing, serving as a certain frame.

The surgeon monitors the entire course of the operation through a monitor. At the same time, he will see the stent and the vessel well, since even at the beginning of the procedure, the patient is injected with an iodine solution, which will reflect all the actions of the surgeon.

The advantage of stenting is that this operation has a low risk of complications. Moreover, it is performed under local anesthesia and does not require a long period of hospitalization.

After stenting, the patient must remain in bed for a certain time (usually for a week). After that, if there are no complications, the person is allowed to go home.

It is very important to exercise regularly after this operation. At the same time, it is worth controlling your condition and not allowing physical overwork.

Every two weeks after the procedure, the patient must necessarily come to the doctor and undergo a follow-up examination. When pain occurs, a person should immediately report it to the doctor.

To recover faster, the patient should take all the drugs prescribed by the doctor. Sometimes drug therapy lasts a long time, more than one month in a row.

Be sure to follow a dietary diet after stenting.

It provides for the following:

  • Complete abstinence from alcohol and smoking.
  • Ban on all animal fats. Also, you can not eat caviar, chocolate, fatty meat and sweet confectionery.
  • The basis of the diet should be vegetable soups, fruit mousses, cereals and greens.
  • You need to eat at least six times a day, but at the same time, portions should not be large.
  • You should completely limit the consumption of salt and salted fish.
  • It is important to drink plenty of fluids to maintain normal water balance in the body. It is recommended to drink fruit compotes, juices and green tea. You can also use a rosehip decoction.

In addition, a person needs to control their blood pressure and blood sugar levels. This is especially important in the presence of already existing hypertension and diabetes, because these diseases can worsen the functioning of the heart.