If a Heart Bypass Surgery is a Good Idea, shouldn't you Expect to Live Longer?

For as long as anyone can remember, the heart bypass surgery has been the gold standard, so to speak, of all surgical processes. That's the way it is for the majority of Americans, numbering more than a million, who are stricken with heart attacks every year. And yet, researchers are beginning to find that perhaps doctors just hand the bypass slips out to liberally - without really thinking about it on a case-by-case basis. Research also seems to suggest that perhaps the way doctors today perform the angioplasty - an important first-line treatment for heart attacks - isn't entirely right. To perform an angioplasty, doctors usually send a catheter and through an opening in the leg; researchers have found that if they were to send it in through an arm, patients would suffer far fewer complications. Why, sending a catheter through the arm is the way they do it in Europe and Canada.

But let's get back to the heart bypass surgery; surgeons have been having a very hard time believing in the results of this study; nevertheless, they haven't been able to refute the fact that it has to be recognized as valid. What the study finds is that in many kinds of cases, when a surgeon recommends a bypass procedure, he doesn't do anything to help improve the survival chances of his patient. In many kinds of patients who are already known to be taking medications for high blood pressure or high cholesterol, the study finds that a heart bypass surgery doesn't improve anything. Clogged arteries happen to be the culprit in 70% of all cases of heart failure in America. When the arteries get clogged, the heart, in trying too hard to pump blood through those narrow vessels, enlarges, and then weakens. The theory has always been that if you gave the heart a new route to pump blood through that was clear and clean, that this would make it easier on the heart and save the patient. No one really knows why; but the research study finds that doctors haven't managed to improve the country's scorecard in heart attack deaths. People with a heart bypass surgery done seem to get just as many heart attacks as people who don't have it done. Sometimes, those who have surgery done, do die more quickly. If you want to read about this study, it's in the New England Journal of medicine.

Their startling finds in the study to do with angioplasty could help heart patients just as much. Sending a catheter in through the arm instead of the leg helps patients immensely. The patient who gets this done can be up and about in a matter of hours. Compare that with how patients who gets it done through the leg needs to stay in the hospital for a day or two, and it's a no-brainer. Just think of how much it could save the insurance company, and by extension save you money in lower premiums!