What are the Different Types of Heart Surgery

In medical terminology Heart Surgery refers to a surgical procedure which intends to replace the blocked coronary arteries with the veins obtained from the lower extremities of a patient. The general procedure involves placing the patient on a heart bypass machine. Then the surgeon performs surgery on the non-beating resting heart of the patient. With the surgery, it definitely improves the quality of life of a heart ailment sufferer.

In order to fix different heart problems of a patient, medical science has come up with numerous types of heart surgeries. Below is the brief description of these heart surgeries :-

Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting, It is also abbreviated as CABG and is one of the most common types of heart surgeries. CABG is usually carried on a person with a serous coronary artery disease (CAD).
In such type of coronary artery disease, a fatty material referred to as ‘Plaque’ gets accumulated inside the coronary arteries of a patient, which then blocks the arteries and reduces the flow of blood in the heart muscle.

In this type of heart surgery, a surgeon usually takes an artery or a vein from the leg, chest or any other body part of a patient. He then grafts or connects them (veins /arteries) with the blocked artery. With this, the CABG helps to bypass the blockage. In one surgery, the surgeon can bypass the maximum of four blocked coronary arteries.

Transmyocardial Laser Revascularization (TLR, This type of heart surgery is usually carried out to treat angina. This is the last option of heart surgery when all the other treatment options have failed.

In this type of heart surgery, the surgeon effectively uses the laser technology to make channels in the heart muscle. These channels in turn allow the blood to flow directly from the heart chambers into the heart muscle.

Heart valves are responsible for letting blood flow in one direction. Each valve comprises of a set of flaps known as ‘Leaflets’.
These leaflets when get opened allow the blood to pass directly into the arteries from heart chambers. Thereafter, the leaflets get closed firmly to stop blood from flowing back and forth into the heart chambers.

Valve repair is a kind of heart surgery which aims at operating the closed leaflets. The leaflets get closed due to the valve fusion which ultimately results in the flow of blood from the valves into the arteries getting discontinue.
To overcome this problem, surgeons usually carry out valve repair or replacement. These replacement valves comprise of human, animal tissue or any man-made substance.

An aneurysm refers to the abnormal bulging in the heart muscle or in the walls of the artery. This trouble usually occurs in the left-most heart chamber. With the passage of time, aneurysm can grow worst and gets burst, thus leading to the bleeding inside the body. It may also result in heart attack.

In order to overcome this trouble, surgeons usually carry out a surgery to replace the weaker sections of the artery with a graft.
Heart Transplantation is usually done on those patients who have weak heart that fails to pump enough blood for meeting the various body requirements.

This type of surgery intends to replace the un-healthy and diseased heart with the healthy heart. This surgical measure is usually practiced when all the medical treatments fail.Only those patients who are either severely sick or need an instant heart transplantation are recommended to carry out this surgical remedy. This is due to the limited availability of donor hearts.

It is entirely up to the medical surgeon who diagnoses your heart problem carefully to decide which surgical procedure suits you best and then carry out the appropriate Heart surgery.