Heart surgery

Heart surgery: to have it or not? What should you do if you are facing an operation on your heart? Perhaps you are afraid and do not know how to talk to your doctor or which questions to ask. This article answers those questions in detail.

So you have an accurate diagnosis, and now the question is: “What happens next? Will I get through the whole course of surgical treatment?”

This is where the key questions are decided, and you should clearly understand that you are making the most important decision for yourself. Heart surgery should be performed only by professional cardiac surgeons and only in a good cardiac surgery hospital.

Keep in mind that this is heart surgery and that you need to prepare for your conversation with the specialist.

What do you need to know to ask the right questions? What kinds of operations are there? How will the operation go? Who will perform it?

Here are the answers. Today all heart operations for coronary artery disease, congenital or acquired heart defects and heart rhythm disorders fall into two main categories: “open” operations and “endovascular (minimally invasive)” operations.

Open heart surgery is surgery in which the heart has to be stopped to perform the main stage of the operation. This requires a special device, the heart-lung machine. During the operation the heart and lungs are taken out of the circulation, and the surgeon can perform any procedure on a so-called “protected”, motionless heart. Thanks to the heart-lung machine, the heart and lungs can now be safely stopped for several hours, which makes the most complex operations possible while keeping the risk of complications to a minimum.

Endovascular heart procedures have earned a firm place among cardiac surgeons’ tools thanks to remarkable progress in modern technology. High-tech devices passed through the blood vessels, without incisions, are used for many procedures: restoring blood flow in the heart’s arteries (stenting and balloon angioplasty), replacing a damaged aortic valve with an artificial biological one (TAVI), ablating the areas where arrhythmias arise (RFA), and more. Doctors follow the procedure on a monitor and control every step, so these operations are not only less traumatic but also safe and effective. Endovascular surgery will not fully replace traditional open surgery, but it plays an ever larger role, including as a treatment in its own right.

Depending on the diagnosis and the patient’s condition, heart surgery can be emergency, urgent or elective.

Emergency heart surgery has to be performed immediately after the diagnosis is made, because any delay threatens the patient’s life.

Urgent surgery must be performed in the near future, but there is still time to prepare and complete the examinations.

Elective surgery is performed on a scheduled day while the patient’s condition is stable.

A team of cardiologists, cardiac surgeons and cardiac anesthesiologists decides how urgent the surgery is, based on the severity of the disease and the examination results. You will never be offered an operation unless it is truly necessary, or if its risks outweigh its benefits.

The Cardiac Surgery Center of the N.I. Pirogov Clinic of High Medical Technologies has experienced specialists who operate every day, including complex heart surgery.

If you need heart surgery and do not know where to have it, call our specialists and get examined at our cardiac surgery and cardiology clinic.