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Heart beat: Please don't let this be the wave of the future

Heart beat

Please don’t let this be the wave of the future

Two reports from the Annals of Thoracic Surgery offer a glimpse into how doctors are pushing the envelope when it comes to reducing complications from bypass surgery and minimizing recovery after it:

Awake heart surgery: (It hurts just to read that phrase!) Seven brave men and women agreed to have double- or triple-bypass surgery while fully awake. They felt no pain, though, thanks to epidural anesthesia. This is the type some women choose to ease the pain of childbirth.

The Turkish surgeons who devised the operation say that awake bypass avoids possible complications from general anesthesia, breathing tubes, and the use of heart-lung machines.

An editorial accompanying the report praised the Turkish team for its innovation, but doubted that that this approach offers much beyond conventional off-pump bypass surgery.

Same-day discharge after bypass surgery: At the Carolina Heart Institute, surgeons performed off-pump cardiac bypass surgery on a 68-year-old man. The operation was over by 9:30 a.m. He had breakfast an hour later and was walking the hospital hallway by 3 p.m. By dinnertime he was in good spirits and asked to leave the hospital. Since he had passed all the required postsurgery checkpoints and was doing fine, his doctors agreed. He was home before bedtime.

Cardiac surgery has come a long way since the first open-heart surgery was performed a half-century ago. We’ll keep you posted on both major changes and its outer limits.

Last updated:	August 21, 2006