The key difference between triple bypass and open heart surgery is that an open heart surgery is a surgical procedure involving the complete opening of the chest cavity while triple bypass surgery is a procedure of open heart surgery. It is performed when three coronary vessels have to be grafted in order to overcome three different occlusions at various points of the coronary circulation.
Cardiac muscles that make up the heart also need blood for their functioning. It is the coronary arteries that carry the blood to the heart. However, these coronary vessels can get clogged and occluded because of different causes such as atherosclerosis and thrombosis. When the medical interventions including pharmaceutical therapies fail to remove these occlusions that hinder the blood flow, surgical interventions are used as the last resort therapy.
Cardiac surgeries were once considered to be highly advanced procedures with unacceptable mortality and morbidity rates. But this field has taken huge strides forwards regarding making the procedure less risky. Hence, saving thousands of lives of innocent heart patients. At present, surgeons use various surgical procedures in the treatment of heart diseases.
CONTENTS
1. Overview and Key Difference
2. What is Open Heart Surgery
3. What is Triple Bypass
4. Triple Bypass vs Open Heart Surgery
What is Open Heart Surgery?
An open heart surgery is a surgical procedure involving the complete opening of the chest cavity. However, it is not necessarily the heart. For example, when there is an occlusion in the coronary circulation, a part of a lower limb vessel (usually the saphenous vein) is extracted. Afterwards, it is grafted into the coronary circulation. Therefore, this provides an alternative pathway for the blood flow bypassing the point of occlusion.
Better access to the internal organs and visibility are the main advantages of this approach. Moreover, this technique is useful in the correction of various abnormalities of the heart and the great vessels.
What is Triple Bypass?
When three coronary vessels have to be grafted in order to overcome three different occlusions at various points of the coronary circulation, it is known as a triple bypass surgery. A triple bypass surgery is an open heart procedure because it involves the complete opening of the chest cavity.
What is the Difference Between Triple Bypass and Open Heart Surgery?
An open heart surgery is a surgical procedure involving the complete opening of the chest cavity but not necessarily the heart. A triple bypass surgery is a type of open heart procedure because it also involves the complete opening of the chest cavity. It is performed when three saphenous veins have to be grafted in order to overcome three different occlusions at various points of the coronary circulation. This is the difference between triple bypass and open heart surgery.
Reference:
1. Kumar, Parveen J., and Michael L. Clark. Kumar & Clark clinical medicine. Edinburgh: W.B. Saunders, 2012. Print. Ser. 8.
Image Courtesy:
1.’1915653′ by Starllyte (CC0) via pixabay