Cardiovascular disease is caused when plaque build-up narrows or blocks blood vessels in the heart. If you are diagnosed with this condition, your doctor may recommend that you have coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery.
There are two surgical procedures that are now commonly used during CABG in place of older, traditional procedures. These advanced techniques are:
More than 300,000 CABG procedures are performed each year in the U.S.
Clampless Beating Heart Surgery
Today many people that have medical conditions such as diabetes, history of stroke, or poor physical health can undergo cardiac surgery with lower risk for developing complications. In contrast to conventional bypass surgery, which stops the heart and puts the patient on a heart-lung machine during the grafting procedure, clampless beating heart bypass surgery uses local stabilization of the heart that allows the surgeon to sew the bypass graft while the heart still beats.
EVH
In endoscopic vessel harvesting (EVH), a healthy blood vessel used in the bypass procedure is removed from the leg or arm through a single one-inch incision, compared with traditional open harvesting procedures that require longer, more-invasive incisions to access the vessel. Since the introduction of EVH, clinicians have been able to provide more than 650,000 CABG patients with a higher standard of care and clinical benefits.
Looking to the Future
Microwave surgical ablation is designed to safely ablate cardiac tissue by applying microwave energy to the epicardial and/or endocardial surfaces of the heart. This procedure creates lesions, or helpful scars, on the heart muscle. Microwave surgical ablation may be performed as an additional procedure during coronary artery bypass surgery or mitral valve repair. In addition, it can be used during stand-alone, port-access procedures for patients not undergoing any other type of heart surgery. More than 14,000 microwave surgical ablation procedures have been performed.
