Redo CABG (Second time bypass surgery)

Redo bypass surgery in India

Due to a host of risk factors, coronary heart disease may recur in patients. These are diabetes, high blood pressure, high stress levels, high fat diet, lack of exercise, smoking, excessive alcohol intake etc. Heart attack is one of the commonest causes of death. Incidence of heart disease has increased 4 times in last 4 decades largely due to unhealthy lifestyles.

Redo bypass surgery is usually done in middle age/elderly patients. However, it may sometimes be needed in young patients also, if their disease progresses very fast. Patients in their thirties to nineties can get the benefit of this redo CABG.

Indian heart surgeons are one of the best in the world. A few of them also have great expertise in doing a Redo CABG.

Redo bypass surgery details

This surgery is a little more complex, bigger and time consuming than the first. After the first bypass surgery, the heart gets stuck to surrounding tissues by adhesions (scar tissue). Hence it has to be first freed from these adhesions before the bypasses can be performed. This is done with gentle care. If the grafts (bypass substitutes) used in the first surgery are blocked, newer ones are harvested for the procedure. These can be left or right internal mammary arteries (BIMA) from inside the chest, left and/or right radial arteries from forearms or vein grafts from lower or upper limbs, depending upon availability. Clean sites in the coronary arteries are identified to perform the redo CABG.

Nowadays, most of Redo CABG surgeries can be done by experts, on the beating heart. This reduces the risk in the surgery as the heart need not be stopped. Also by using arterial grafts, the life of a Redo CABG surgery can be further increased.

A Redo CABG may take anything between 3-10 hours to perform.

As the Redo CABG is a more complex operation, careful selection of the operating surgeon who has a good experience of doing such surgeries, is advisable.

Dr. Prateek Bhatnagar is one of India’s leading heart surgeons in the field of Redo CABG. He has even performed Re Redo CABG successfully (third time bypass surgery in a patient). Patients coming from different parts of India and even abroad, have been availing Dr. Bhatnagar’s expertise in Redo CABG. He is sometimes called to operate upon high risk Redo CABGs in other States of India too. Most of Redo CABG operations are done by Dr. Bhatnagar using beating heart surgery and preferably arterial grafts.

Risk of Redo CABG in Dr. Bhatnagar’s hands is as low as the first time bypass surgery, in standard operations. This is as low as 1%.