This operation has been performed successfully since the mid-1970s, just prior to the time when balloon angioplasty was developed. Both are well proven options for the patient with coronary artery disease.

In the bypass graft operation, the surgeon actually creates a bypass, like a highway, around an obstruction in one or more coronary arteries using a segment of an artery or vein from another location in the body. A leg vein is the most common graft vessel in open-heart operations, while a blood vessel from the chest is used in the newer, “closed-chest” operation.

The graft is then connected to an obstructed artery below the site of obstruction, creating the new channel, or bypass, that allows blood to circulate to the affected portion of heart muscle.

Both open and closed procedures performed at Saint Francis require the body’s blood supply to be circulated outside of the body through the heart-lung bypass machine. This machine allows the surgeon to work on a stilled heart for the delicate procedure of connecting the graft to the diseased vessel(s).