Coronary Bypass Surgery (CABG)
One of the most frequently performed operations in the open heart surgery. If your cardiologist thinks that you suffer on CAD (Coronary Artery Disease) he will make some tests to find diagnosis. If those tests are positive, he will send you to invasive diagnostic (Coronary Catheterization) to evaluate and verify this diagnosis. In the case that your catheterization shows high significant stenosis on the coronary arteries you will be advised to undergo PCI and Stent treatment (balloon dilatation and stent) or to have a heart surgery. There are different indications for those two options.
After you decided, together with your cardiologist, that the best option for you is the heart surgery you can be send to us Department of Heart Surgery.
Usually you have to present you catheterizations film with the letter of your cardiologist by the first meeting. At that time you should become the information about the operation and the first impression about the whole procedure.
If you decide to have the surgery in our department, you will be scheduled immediately for the operation and you will be asked to come to the department approximately 5 days prior the operation date, to give the blood sample for the Blood Bank. If you don’t tell us that you want bloodless surgery, we can not start the operation without having 4 units of red blood cells prepared.
You will be admitted in the hospital one day before the scheduled operation. The admission should be done until 10:00, so there will be enough time to perform routine pre-operative tests. In the afternoon our cardiac-anesthetist will visit you and explain the anesthetic procedure. Also you have to sign you operations consent / conformation. In the evening your surgeon will visit you once again, so you can ask him if there are some more questions about the operation.  
In the evening before the operation you can not eat or drink after 22:00. The relatives and visitors have to leave your room after 21:00.
In the evening you have to take shower and get a klisma. From the anesthetist you will get some medicines for sleep.
On the operations day you will take a shower once more, and the nurses will shave your legs and thorax. They will bring you to the operating theater where you will get the anesthesia.
After that, your surgical team will proceed with the operation. If everything goes smoothly, without complications the whole procedure will take between 3 and 4 hours. After that, you will be transferred to our Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where you will stay one or two first postoperative days. After the thorax tubes are taken out, you can be transferred to the surgical ward. At the meetings prior to surgery you can choose one or two bed room for your stay after the operation.
On the sixth postoperative day you will be discharged from the hospital. One week later you will have appointment for control, and after that the further therapy should be carried on by your cardiologist, who will be informed about your operation and its results.