WIS News 10 - Columbia, South Carolina | Health Alert: Angio-bypass

Health Alert: Angio-bypass

(National-NBC) November 28, 2005 - Heart bypass surgery and balloon angioplasty are very different procedures. But some doctors are combining the two to make heart therapy easier on their patients.

Four months ago, Joan Sullivan was in hot water. She had blocked arteries and needed two different procedures to treat them. "I was very scared," she recalls.

Doctors at the University of Maryland scheduled her for bypass surgery to reroute blood around one blocked artery, and balloon angioplasty to open two other blood vessels. They're two different procedures that typically require two trips to the hospital, but not this time.

Joan Sullivan, "They did both at the same time, and that's what's so unique about this."

Joan had a "hybrid" procedure, a bypass and an angioplasty at the same time, in the same room.

Dr. Barry Reicher explains, "It's a room that basically is equipped both as an operating room and is a cath lab."

There's a big difference between the two. In a cath lab, an interventional radiologist uses nonsurgical techniques.

Dr. Robert Poston says, "The more severe blockages would go to open heart surgery where you make an incision through the breast plate, open up the chest."

For patients who have the option of the hybrid procedure, surgeons perform the bypass with a much smaller incision, so recovery time is faster.

Dr. Poston speaks about the procedure, "Not cutting open the chest, but through a small incision in the left, left chest through the ribs. By two weeks they feel pretty much back to normal. And that almost never happens in the open sternum case."

"I really feel great now," says Joan Sullivan. "Feel like my old self. Have all kinds, you know, my energy back."

And that's just her cup of tea.

The best candidates for the one-stop hybrid procedure, like Joan, have a blockage in the major artery in front of the heart, as well as two other blockages that can be treated with stents.

Posted 1:06pm by Bryce Mursch