Heart Surgery

Some heart conditions require surgery. This can include widowmaker heart attacks and afib chest pain. Enloe Medical Center’s trusted heart surgeons perform a wide-range of cardiothoracic procedures. These include:

• Coronary artery bypass: Coronary arteries are the vessels that carry blood to your heart muscle. If one of these is blocked, blood can’t get to your heart, causing damage. Coronary artery bypass surgery makes a path for blood to flow to your heart by going around the blockage. This procedure does not cure heart disease or blockages, but it can relieve your symptoms.
• Endoscopic vein removals: During this procedure, your care team will take healthy veins from a small incision and reuse them as new heart vessels.
• Minimally invasive endovascular stenting: You can get aneurysms (dilations or bulges) in your blood vessels. These can burst, causing a stroke or bleeding. If you develop one of these, your care team may perform this procedure. During it, your heart surgeon will place stents, small metal coils or mesh tubes, to reinforce your artery.
• Heart valve repair: If one or more of your heart valves is not working properly, your care team may perform a valve repair. Your care team can take one of several approaches. These can range from simple annuloplasty to complex reconstruction, depending on your condition.
• Heart valve replacement: During this procedure, your doctor will use prosthetic tissue and/or devices to replace your unhealthy valves.
• Ascending aorta aneurysm repair: An ascending aortic aneurysm is an abnormal bulging and weakening in your aorta, the main blood vessel that carries blood from your heart to your body. In this surgery, your surgeon will remove the bulging weak area and sew a man-made substitute, called a graft, into place. If the aortic valve is not healthy, your surgeon may repair it or replace it with an artificial valve.
• Cox-Maze surgery: The Cox-Maze procedure treats atrial fibrillation, an irregular and often rapid heart rate that occurs when the two upper chambers of your heart experience chaotic electrical signals. In this procedure, your surgeon will create a series of safe and effective scars to permanently block the electrical signals triggering the irregular heartbeat.
• Heart pacemaker surgery: A pacemaker is a small electrically charged device that helps manage irregular heartbeats. To implant the device, a cardiologist will make a small incision near your collarbone and guide an insulated wire through the vein to your heart. The wire will be connected to the pacemaker, which the doctor will also insert beneath the skin.

Bloodless Surgery

At Enloe Medical Center, we respect your beliefs about blood transfusions. We understand that for some patients, having a blood transfusion is not an option.

That’s why you can receive medical and surgical care without receiving blood or blood products. Talk to your care team about this if this is a concern.

Enloe Heart Program

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