“What surgery is needed after a heart attack?”

Normally stents if vessels are naroow or blocked.

Ordinarily patients will undergo cardiac catheterization and ballon angioplasty to open up occluded arteries. This procedure is a short term hospital based cardiac catheter lab procedure. The catheter is usually inserted in the groin area and done under imaging to guide the cardiologist. Sometimes, such as in the case of 4 vessel disease open heart surgery is the best alternative. That is known as a coronary artery bypass graft CABG surgery. These two types of procedures are now the standard of care for patients who have a heart attack. Patients should know they will be cared for under the latest guidelines by expert specialists in their respective fields.

The answer to your question depends upon the amount of blockage in the heart blood vessels (coronary arteries). . Sometimes nothing is done and patients are medically managed. Other times, the doctors need to put a stent in to open up narrowed blood vessels. If there are too many areas of blockages and stenting is impossible or inappropriate, a Cardiac Bypass surgery is performed to replace the closed blood vessels with other open blood vessels. This surgery can often be done with robotics rather than opening up the chest. Hope this answers your questions