Friday, August 21, 2009

Quadruple Bypass Surgery Survival Rates: How to Improve Your Chances of Success





Are You Facing Heart Surgery?

If you have been diagnosed with heart disease, you may be facing an upcoming bypass surgery. Depending on the severity of the blockage in your blood vessels, this may need to be a multiple bypass. Here, get your questions answered about how to improve your chances of a successful operation by learning the facts about quadruple bypass surgery survival rates.


What Happens During a Quadruple Bypass Surgery?

When the vessels that carry blood from the heart to the rest of the body are blocked, a cardiac surgeon must create a new pathway for the blood that bypasses the old one. The surgeon will remove a healthy blood vessel from another part of the body. This process is called grafting. They will then take that graft and place it in the heart, creating a bypass for blood to flow. Sometimes, more than one pathway is blocked, creating the need for multiple grafts. If this happens to you, then you may undergo a multiple bypass surgery.


How Dangerous Is Quadruple Bypass Surgery?

According to Dr. Prediman K. Shah, Director of Cardiology at Cedars-Sinai, in the hands of a skilled surgeon, a bypass can be done with only a one or two percent chance of anything going wrong. He also states that having a multiple bypass is no more risky than having a single bypass. However, the chances of a successful surgery and recovery are related to several other factors that have nothing to do with the surgeon.


Factors That Affect Your Survival Rate

Some of the factors that affect a bypass surgery include how old the patient is and the condition of the heart at the time of the surgery. Also, having other underlying chronic diseases like diabetes or having a heart in an otherwise poor condition can greatly affect the surgery recovery. In general, the overall condition of the person at the time of the bypass surgery will impact their survival rate.


How to Improve Your Chances of a Successful Quadruple Bypass

The good news is that there is something you can do to improve your chances of a successful operation; improve your overall health.

1. Lose weight before your heart surgery.

2. Reduce the inflammation levels in your body that is linked to heart disease.

3. Start to make heart-healthy changes to your diet.

4. If you have high blood pressure, diabetes or any other chronic condition, get it under control as soon as possible by making lifestyle changes.

5. Reduce your stress levels and get plenty of rest each night.


Next:

Read about recovering from quadruple bypass surgery.



0 comments: