Heart Surgery #128

Cardiovascular surgery is usually on the heart or the great vessels.  It can be to repair defective heart valves or a heart transplant.  Most frequently heart surgery is to treat  heart disease and the procedure performed is a coronary artery bypass grafting.  Not all of us but most of us had bypass surgery and were asleep during the surgery.

After you have general anesthesia and are completely asleep the surgeon will normally make a 8 to 10 inch incision along the middle of your sternum.  They will then open the breast bone to access your heart and aorta.   You will be connected to a heart-lung bypass machine which does the work of your heart.  Adding oxygen to the blood and circulating it through your body.  Your heart is stopped once your are connected to the heart-lung machine.    The surgeon will take an artery or vein from another part of your body.  Usually a vein from the leg is used for the graft, however it could be an artery from the chest or one from your wrist.  Using one of these veins the surgeon will graft it onto the blocked artery creating a detour or bypass around the blocked area.  This will be repeated until each blocked artery has been bypass grafted.
Your breastbone is closed with sternal wire and the incision sewn closed with stitches.  The surgery will last 5 to 6 hours or more.  There are of course risk or dangers with this type surgery.  Blood clots in the lungs.  Heart attack during surgery, infection, lung failure, or breathing problems are all possibilities. 

A change I noticed is my feeling to cold, even in hot weather.  Either my tolerance to cool temperatures has changed, or my internal body temperature control has changed.  I feel cool or cold even in the summertime. Most often I wear long sleeve shirts and denim jeans rather than shorts when working outside in 90 degree plus temperatures.  When we go out to dinner I will always have on long sleeves and take along a light weight jacket  because most restaurants keep their air conditioning on low temperatures.  From what I have found this not not unusual with those who have had heart surgery.  It is not completely understood by doctors but some possible causes are offered.  One is the machine used to circulated blood through your body does so without  circulating through the heart.  This normally runs for most of the duration of your surgery which could be several hours.  This type circulation could result in minor damage to your capillaries.  Or the temperature control section of the brain could be affected by the length of a long duration surgical procedure.   Those are the two predominant possibilities I found.  Have many of you also experienced this problem of feeling cool or cold since your heart surgery?

Heart bypass surgery is no guarantee of prevention of possible future heart attacks or coronary artery blockage reoccurring.  Eating healthy foods, regular exercise, weight and cholesterol control are the basic elements you control in living with the heart condition you now have. I have read where blockage occurring again is not unusual after 10 years or more after the initial bypass surgery.  It is also not unusual to occur prior to 10 years.  The recurrence of blockage can be effected by how healthy of a lifestyle and how well you have taking care of yourself.