Patients needing second-time or "re-do" heart surgery have a new
safer alternative. New findings show that an "off-pump" surgical
procedure is performed safely and has improved outcomes for
patients than traditional methods. Due to a newly standardized
approach and enhanced technology, doctors can perform this
controversial surgery and eliminate the damaging effects of
using a heart bypass machine. Off-pump surgery, also known as
the "beating heart" method, is performed while the heart is
still beating without foreign support, such as the heart-lung
machine, used in cardiopulmonary bypasses. 99% of the 86
patients undergoing re-do surgery in this study had the
procedure initiated off-pump, out of which five were later
converted to using a heart-lung machine. There were no deaths of
those five patients and 81 procedures were successfully
completed without a bypass machine. Of the 6.7% predicted deaths
based on past on-pump redo operations, use of the beating heart
method in this study resulted in just 2.2% dea