Heart Surgery

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Traditional CABG

If you have one or more major coronary arteries that no longer adequately supply blood to the heart, your doctor will likely suggest you undergo CABG. In this surgery, your doctor will make an incision down the chest, separate the chest bone and open the rib cage to access the heart and coronary arteries. You will receive medicine that stops the heart, so your doctor can perform the work. You will be connected to a heart-lung bypass machine to provide blood and oxygen to the body while the surgery is performed.

Your surgeon will “harvest” a healthy blood vessel from elsewhere in the body to reroute blood. One end of the healthy blood vessel is grafted, or sewed on to, a segment of coronary artery below the blockage; the other is grafted to the aorta, the body’s main blood vessel.

When the graft is in place, the heart usually starts beating again on its own. If not, a few mild electrical shocks are administered to get it started. Once the heart is working again, the chest bone is wired together, and the chest is surgically closed.

Off-Pump CABG

Surgeons at the Riverside Health & Vascular Institute perform a variation on traditional CABG known as off-pump CABG. This procedure has many similarities to traditional CABG, with one important exception. Instead of stopping the heart and connecting the patient to a heart-lung machine, the heart continues beating and supplying blood and oxygen to the body. To allow the surgeons to operate, the heart is held in place with a mechanical device.

Off-pump CABG is sometimes called beating heart bypass grafting. It is often the right choice for patients at high risk for developing complications associated with the use of a heart-lung machine, which includes people who have had a prior stroke or have a fragile aorta.

Heart Valve Surgery

• Aortic root replacement – with and without valve-sparing procedures
• Mitral valve repair and/or replacement
• Aortic valve repair and/or replacement
• Tricuspid valve repair and/or replacement

Heart Arrhythmia Surgery

• Pulmonary vein isolation
• Modified Cox-Maze procedure
• Stand-alone atrial fibrillation surgery
• Ligation of left atrial appendage

Surgery on the Thoracic Aorta

• Aortic dissection repair
• Deep hypothermic circulatory arrest techniques

Additional Heart Operations

• Removal of cardiac tumors
• Repair of septal defects (PFO, ASD, VSD)
• Removal of blood clots in the lungs (Pulmonary embolism) or heart and pulmonary thromboendarterectomy

Specialty Care

Advanced care options to support patients experiencing a variety of conditions

• ECMO: Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, also known as extracorporeal life support, is short-term means of providing prolonged cardiac and respiratory support to people who are seriously ill by infusing oxygen into the blood and removing carbon dioxide. It can also provide hemodynamic (blood pressure) support.
• VAD: Temporary ventricular assist devices are mechanical pumps that are used to support heart function and blood flow in people who have weakened hearts. These types of cardiac devices, such as an Impella, help pump blood through the body to vital organs, just as a healthy heart would.