Understanding Open Heart Surgery

I'm John Miller.  I'm a cardiac and thoracic surgeon here at Atrium Medical Center.

The vast majority of open heart is indeed bypass surgery, which we perform when the coronary arteries, which are the arteries which supply blood to the heart muscle, become narrowed or obstructed.  The majority of that constitutes utilizing an artery from the back of the chest wall, sometimes from the arm, as well as a vein from the leg, to construct new arteries to the surface of the heart to bring blood out and around those areas of blockage to continue to feed the heart muscle and allow it to continue to function as it should. 

We've been performing open heart surgery here at Atrium for nearly 4 years now.  So, our service offers the, the, the full gamut of open surgeries that are available, from bypass surgery to valvular heart surgery, in addition into surgery for abnormal heart rhythms.  That operation typically consists of a 3 to 5 hour procedure – bypass surgery, that is – 3 to 5 hour procedure, where again, we construct new arteries to the surface of the heart.  The patient, in general, will be in the hospital anywhere from 4 to 7 days after that operation, during which time, they will be increasing their level of activity to the point where they can manipulate themselves in and out of bed without much difficulty, manipulate, or I should say ambulate, around the hallways without a bit of difficulty, and hopefully will be returning home in pretty much a normal state of function.

At Atrium, our services are more personal and less institutional.  When you have your heart surgery, you don't have your heart surgery by a university or a clinic, you have your heart surgery by Dr. Miller or by Dr. Denmark.  You are taken care of not by a clinic or a university, you're taken care of by individual nurses with individual names, and just as we have individual names, so do our patients.  People don't have to venture 30, 50, 60, 100 miles from home to obtain the cardiac services and the cardiac surgeries that they, in the past, have had to go seek.  We've brought downtown to your hometown.