Heart Disease
By: Shelby Taylor
What is Heart Disease?
The causes of Heart Disease.
Treatments for Hearts Disease.
Surgery is a treatment for heart disease. One surgery you could get is stents. Stents are small tubes used to treat weakened or narrow arteries. Stents are used to open narrow arteries and reduce symptoms such as chest pain. Also to treat a heart attack. Stents are usually used in a procedure called percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) or angioplasty. The procedure only takes about an hour minimum and there are risk to the surgery such as a blood clot can form in the stent and cause it to suddenly narrow or block it completely. That is why patients who have this surgery have to take blood-thinning drugs after the surgery.
Another treatment is angioplasty. It is a non-surgical procedure that can be used to open blocked heart arteries. A thin plastic tube is inserted in an artery and then a catheter is navigated through the heart's chambers, valves, and major vessels. Once the catheter is move into the artery with the blood clot a interventional procedure will be performed depending on the doctor's decision.
Heart bypass surgery can be a treatment. It is used to treat arteries that are blocked. The blood may be given a new route to the heart. A blood vessel is removed and placed where there is a narrowing artery in order to bypass blockages and get the blood to flow to the heart. The blood vessels used for grafts depend on the size of the blood clot. Blood vessels used to substitute are usually from the chest, legs, or arms.