The surgeon opens the patient's chest and makes changes to the heart or the arteries on the surface of it, while a heart-lung machine is used to support the patient's circulation. This is one of the most commonly used operations, with a high overall survival rate.

The term 'open heart surgery' may also be used when referring to bypass surgery, which is used to treat coronary artery disease (CAD), a chronic disease in which the flow of blood to the heart muscle is obstructed due to atherosclerosis (a "hardening" of the arteries on the surface of the heart). Open-heart surgery is also used to describe procedures that do not involve the use of the heart-lung machine (e.g., off pump bypass surgery).

And we could continue to name more types of open-heart surgeries, they all depend on the condition being treated and the health of the patient.

According to the American Heart Association (AHA), almost 666,000 open-heart surgeries were performed in America in 2003. Coronary artery bypass graft followed with 467,000 surgeries; heart valve procedures with 95,000; heart transplants with 2,016; and other procedures including surgery for treatment of heart failure, atrial fibrillation, congenial heart diseases, tumors and cardiac trauma (e.g., a gunshot wound) account for 1,000 procedures.

Coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) treats CAD, in which the blood flow is obstructed due to built-up plaque in the arteries. Here, the surgeon takes a part of some healthy blood vessel in the body and uses it to create a detour around the blocked portion of the blood vessel in the heart.

Heart valve procedures may consist of the repair or replacement of the damaged valve. The repair may be performed either as a catheter-based procedure or a surgery; whereas the replacement of the defective valve that cannot be replaced is an open-heart surgery, and biological or mechanical valves are used. The most treated types of valvular heart disease are stenosis (narrowed valves), or regurgitation (improperly closing valves that lets blood leak back in the wrong direction).

In a heart transplant, the surgeon replace a severely diseased or damaged heart with a healthy heart from a recently deceased donor. There exists a serious shortage of donor hearts. The way of improving the comfort of those patients waiting for a donor organ and a totally artificial heart are still being studied.

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Last Update: 19/01/2007