Surgical Procedures

If you have advanced heart disease, you may need a procedure to open an artery and improve blood flow. Two common procedures are:

Coronary angioplasty (balloon angioplasty), widens narrowed arteries by threading a balloon-tipped catheter through an arm or groin artery to the blocked artery in the heart. The balloon is inflated to unclog the artery, then deflated and removed. In the majority of cases your doctor is likely to insert a stent—a tiny metal scaffold—to prop the artery open so it doesn’t close again. 

Newer stents called drug-eluting stents are coated with medication that is slowly released into the coronary artery to keep plaque from reforming. Nearly 90 percent of coronary stent procedures now use this technology.

Coronary artery bypass graft (bypass surgery) uses blood vessels often taken from the leg or chest to go around or “bypass” clogged coronary arteries so blood can flow through the new vessels to the heart. This is a more invasive procedure during with the chest is opened and the heart is temporarily stopped during the operation.

Coronary artery stenting

Permanent pacemaker

Implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD)

Heart valve replacement or repair

Heart transplant

Cardiac ablation