Heart Procedures
Some cardiac issues can be treated with medication. However, some may need to be treated with surgery or an intervention. Your heart surgeon will discuss which option will work best for you.
Cardiac & Vascular Interventions
Interventions are primarily used to stop a heart attack while it’s happening. In addition, it has become one of the primary procedures to prevent a heart attack from happening. With an intervention, you’ll see a noticeable result, along with a quick recovery and not much pain.
Your physician creates a small incision to open an artery. Then, your physician threads a small catheter (a thin flexible tube) through the vessel to remove blockages and/or perform repairs. Your physician will monitor your progress using live-imaging. Most of these procedures take place in SIH Memorial Hospital of Carbondale’s cardiac catheterization lab.
Open-heart surgery
Some issues can only be treated with open-heart surgery. At SIH Memorial Hospital of Carbondale, our surgeons perform more than 150 open-heart surgeries each year, on average.
During this type of surgery, the chest is cut open and surgery is performed on the arteries, valves or muscles of the heart. This type of surgery is performed when it’s time to: repair or replace heart valves, repair damaged areas of the heart or implant medical devices to help the heart beat properly.
Bypass surgery
This type of surgery is used to replace damaged arteries that supply blood to your heart muscle. It typically happens when coronary arteries become blocked or damaged. During this four to five-hour surgery, surgeons use a vein (often from the leg), to create a bypass around the blocked arteries. This makes sure your arteries are getting enough blood, which is essential to making sure your heart is working properly.
Valve repair or replacement surgery
Valves between each of the heart's four pumping chambers keep blood flowing forward through the heart. Valves might need to be replaced if they become stiff or if they become leaky (meaning the blood leaks backward). Repairing or replacing valves within the heart takes the skill of a cardiovascular surgeon. In the heart’s complex operating system, sometimes the parts don’t work together properly. Valves can often be repaired, but sometimes require replacement altogether.