Cardiac rehab is finished!
The heart attack was January 27, 2013 and it took until today to finish the rehab but it got done. We’ve both learned quite a bit and I doubt that we’ll ever go back to our earlier way of eating.
What a journey this has been – and I hope it’s done now.
I know that there’s always something else right around the corner but I hope it doesn’t hit us too soon.
This is a video showing Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting being done through left 4th intercostal space by a 6-7cm incision.
We are routinely doing Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting, single vessel or multivessel through left 4th or 5th Intercostal Space depending on position of apex of heart and the target arteries on routine chest x-ray and coronary angiogram. We are using skeletonised LIMA and Free Radial Artery to construct a ‘Y’ and then pick all the vessels to be grafted sequentially. Single Lung ventilation using an endobronchial tube is essential.
Team Includes Dr.Kshitij Dubey (Chief Cardiac Surgeon), Dr. Vikas Gupta (Chief Cardiac Anaesthetist), Dr. Krishnpal Singh (Anaesthetist) Mr.M.V.Krishna Mohan (Sr.Clinical Perfusionist), Rajshree Hospital & Research Centre, Indore, Madhya Pradesh.
Three coronary artery bypass grafts, a LIMA to LAD and two saphenous vein grafts – one to the right coronary artery (RCA) system and one to the obtuse marginal (OM) system. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Editor’s note: Dr. John P. Reilly is editor-in-chief ofsecondscount.org, the patient education website of the Society of Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions, which is focused on raising awareness of heart attacks and other cardiovascular diseases. Reilly is the program director for the Cardiology Fellowship Program at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans.
(CNN) — If you are one of the nearly 785,000 Americans who suffer a first heart attack this year, what you do in the first few minutes can determine an entire lifetime.
Unfortunately, many people do not know what symptoms to look for or what life-saving steps to take. To help make sense of it all, the following can help you or someone you know survive a heart attack:
Q: What are the top three things I should know about heart attacks?
A: When a heart attack strikes, seconds count.
Seek medical attention immediately. The longer your symptoms persist, the greater the amount of heart muscle damage you may suffer. The start of your symptoms is a signal that blood flow to your heart muscle has been blocked. The emergency department and interventional cardiologist or surgeon will move quickly to restore blood flow to your heart to prevent further damage.
Call 911 for an ambulance. Don’t drive yourself or have someone else drive you. During a heart attack, your heart rhythm can become abnormal or even stop.
Emergency medical providers can perform an electrocardiogram, or EKG, on the way to the hospital and confirm whether you are having a heart attack and treat your heart rhythm abnormalities if needed. They can also call the hospital in advance to prepare a medical team for your arrival so treatment can start immediately.
If available, chew one uncoated aspirin while waiting for the ambulance. This may help slow the formation of blood clots that can cause heart attacks.
Q: What are the common symptoms of heart attacks, and how do they differ between men and women?
A: We’ve all seen the scenario where the actor grabs his or her chest in agonizing pain and falls to the ground. A heart attack seems obvious, but in real life, it’s not always that clear.
Heart attack symptoms can vary and don’t always involve debilitating chest pain. Many patients say their symptoms were not painful but more like an ache or discomfort. Symptoms may start with a dull pain in the chest or disguise themselves as indigestion, nausea, shortness of breath or heartburn. Other common symptoms include arm, neck, jaw, back or upper stomach discomfort, dizziness, change in heart rhythm and sudden cold sweats.
But these symptoms may differ for your wife, mother or sister because women do not always experience the same heart attack symptoms as men. Symptoms may be subtle and difficult to identify and may not even include chest pain.
While this does not mean women cannot have chest pain, other symptoms that may signal a heart attack for women include sudden weakness and fatigue, body aches or flu-like symptoms. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women, so it’s important that you don’t ignore these symptoms, regardless of how subtle they are.
Q: What are my heart attack treatment options?
A: There are various treatment options available when you’re having a heart attack. The most effective treatment is angioplasty and stenting. In some cases, clot-busting medication is administered intravenously. In rare and severe cases, emergency coronary artery bypass grafting is needed.
Angioplasty is a minimally invasive, nonsurgical procedure that opens the blocked artery. During the procedure, a small mesh tube called a stent may be placed in the artery to restore blood flow and scaffold the vessel open.
Clot-busting medications melt away the blood clot that is blocking the artery. Coronary artery bypass grafting is open-heart surgery where a healthy artery or vein from elsewhere in the body is connected upstream and downstream from the heart artery blockage, bypassing the blockage and creating a new path for blood flow.
Fortunately, medical technology has advanced tremendously in recent years, and many patients can return home and back to their normal — if not better — quality of life within days of treatment.
Q: What should I do following my heart attack?
A: Experiencing a heart attack is a life-changing event and an important time to reflect upon your current lifestyle.
Cardiac rehabilitation benefits many patients by helping them resume a healthy lifestyle following their heart attack. You’ll also be taking medication regularly. Adhering to your medical therapy and scheduling consistent follow-up visits with your cardiologist and primary care doctor are both beneficial habits to adopt.
In addition, it’s important to become your heart’s No. 1 health advocate. Assess your current lifestyle and see where you can make improvements. Can you eat healthier and exercise more, reduce your stress levels or quit smoking? These changes will greatly increase your odds of fighting off future heart attacks.
From CNN.com
Among patients with complex coronary artery disease, coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), as compared to percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), is associated with a greater risk of periprocedural stroke, but not long-term stroke, according to a new analysis of the SYNTAX trial published on March 20 in JACC Cardiovascular Interventions. At four-year follow-up, there was no difference in stroke incidence between treatments.
The SYNTAX trial randomized 1,800 patients with de novo three-vessel and/or left main coronary disease to CABG or PCI. Overall, 33 and 20 strokes occurred at four years in the CABG and PCI groups, respectively. In the CABG group, nine of the 33 strokes occurred within 30 days of the procedure, whereas 18 of the 20 strokes in the PCI arm occurred more than 30 days after intervention. However, in a multivariate analysis, CABG was not significantly associated with an increased stroke risk (p=0.089).
Lead investigator Michael J. Mack, MD, FACC, Baylor Healthcare System, Plano, Texas, and colleagues concluded, “The overall incidence of stroke was low at four years in the SYNTAX trial in both CABG- and PCI-treated patients. Though more strokes occurred in the CABG arm than in the PCI arm early in the study, no significant differences were found at four years.”
In an accompanying editorial, Jesse Weinberger, MD, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, and Craig Smith, MD, FACC, Columbia University School of Medicine, New York, noted that this analysis reports different stroke rates than the original study where rates were higher with CABG than with PCI (2.2 vs. 0.6 percent, p=0.003). The current analysis, “focused specifically on stroke, reports a stroke difference of 1 percent (CABG) vs. 0.2 percent (PCI) at 0 to 30 days by intent-to-treat (p=0.037), and three of the nine strokes in the CABG group occurred pre-operatively, so a statistically meaningful difference in an as-treated analysis is doubtful,” they wrote.
“The SYNTAX trial was not specifically designed to determine the etiology of stroke in patients treated with CABG or PCI. It is imperative to establish the causes of stroke during CABG and develop strategies to prevent these strokes,” the editorialists concluded. “A prospective study may be warranted.”
From CardioSource – Short Term Stroke Risk CABG PCI.
From the New England Journal of Medicine
André Lamy, M.D., P.J. Devereaux, M.D., Ph.D., Prabhakaran Dorairaj, M.D., David P. Taggart, Ph.D., Shengshou Hu, M.D., Ernesto Paolasso, M.D., Zbynek Straka, M.D., Leopoldo S. Piegas, M.D., Ahmet Ruchan Akar, M.D., Anil R. Jain, M.D., Nicolas Noiseux, M.D., Chandrasekar Padmanabhan, M.D., Juan-Carlos Bahamondes, M.D., Richard J. Novick, M.D., Prashant Vaijyanath, M.D., Sukesh Kumar Reddy, M.D., Liang Tao, M.D., Pablo A. Olavegogeascoechea, M.D., Balram Airan, M.D., Toomas-Andres Sulling, M.D., Richard P. Whitlock, M.D., Yongning Ou, M.Sc., Janice Pogue, Ph.D., Susan Chrolavicius, B.A., and Salim Yusuf, D.Phil. for the CORONARY Investigators
March 11, 2013
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1301228
Coronary-artery bypass grafting (CABG) reduces mortality among patients with extensive coronary artery disease.1 CABG is usually performed with the use of cardiopulmonary bypass (on-pump CABG). With this approach, perioperative mortality is about 2%, and myocardial infarction, stroke, or renal failure requiring dialysis develop in an additional 5 to 7% of patients. The technique of performing CABG on a beating heart (off-pump CABG) was developed to reduce perioperative complications, some of which may be related to the use of cardiopulmonary bypass and to the cross-clamping of the aorta associated with the on-pump CABG procedure, and to improve long-term outcomes.
Read the entire article here
An example of a heart attack, which can occur after the use of a performance-enhancing drug. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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Three coronary artery bypass grafts, a LIMA to LAD and two saphenous vein grafts – one to the right coronary artery (RCA) system and one to the obtuse marginal (OM) system. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Angioplasty and heart bypass surgery are giants among medical procedures in America. They are performed more than a million times each year and together drive a $100-billion industry. But an article in the recent issue of Harvard Magazine explores a frightening truth: There’s no evidence that they improve life expectancy by even a single day. – See more at:
heart with coronary arteries (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Before we talk about treatment, let’s start with a discussion about the human body and about your medical condition.
Your doctor has recommended that you have coronary artery bypass surgery. But what does that actually mean?
Three coronary artery bypass grafts, a LIMA to LAD and two saphenous vein grafts – one to the right coronary artery (RCA) system and one to the obtuse marginal (OM) system. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Your doctor has recommended that you have coronary artery bypass surgery. But what does that actually mean?
Your heart is located in the center of your chest. It is surrounded by your rib cage and protected by your breastbone. Your heart’s job is to keep blood continually circulating throughout your body.
The vessels that supply the body with oxygen-rich blood are called arteries.
The vessels that return blood to the heart are called veins.
Like any other muscle in the body, the heart depends on a steady supply of oxygen rich blood. The arteries that carry this blood supply to the heart muscle are called coronary arteries.
Sometimes, these blood vessels can narrow or become blocked by deposits of fat, cholesterol and other substances collectively known as plaque.
Over time, plaque deposits can narrow the vessels so much that normal blood flow is restricted. In some cases, the coronary artery becomes so narrow that the heart muscle itself is in danger.
Coronary bypass surgery attempts to correct this serious problem. In order to restore normal blood flow, the surgeon removes a portion of a blood vessel from the patient’s leg or chest, most probably the left internal mammary artery and the saphenous vein.
Your doctor uses one or both of these vessels to bypass the old, diseased coronary artery and to build a new pathway for blood to reach the heart muscle. These transplanted vessels are called grafts and depending on your condition, your doctor may need to perform more than one coronary artery bypass graft.
Of course, operating on the heart is a complex and delicate process and in the case of bypass surgery, your doctor will most likely need to stop your heart before installing the graft.
During the time that your heart is not beating, a special machine, called a heart-lung machine, will take over the job of circulating and oxygenating your blood.
By using this machine, your doctor is able to repair the heart without interfering with the blood flow to the rest of the body.
Following surgery, your heart will be restarted and you will be disconnected from the heart-lung machine
From MedStar Union Memorial Hospital. They say “Last year alone, our doctors performed more than 880 open-heart surgeries and 6,100 catheter-based procedures, including nearly 2,000 angioplasties. No hospital in Maryland or nationally performs a higher percentage (94 percent) of beating-heart bypass surgeries.”
Warning – graphic video!
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