Cardiovascular Center has opened the era of ‘hybrid’ surgery combining with stent graft

Stent

Hybrid surgery is getting attention for treating cardiovascular disease that often deals with narrowed or blocked system. Cardiovascular disease, a severe illness which often accompanies emergency conditions, is the second highest cause of death for Koreans following cancer. Hybrid surgery that combines surgical and non-surgical procedures reduces post-surgery complications and provides better prognosis. Aortic Aneurysm is a typical condition to which hybrid surgery can be applied. Aorta supplies blood that is pumped out from the heart to the whole body. In the past, when the aorta gets blocked or narrowed for a variety of reasons, a targeted section of an aorta was replaced with an artificial vessel via the surgical procedure. However, it had a high risk of complications or even death as it artificially stops the patient’s heart to use a heart-lung machine in place during the operation and creates an incision over 30cm on the patient’s chest or abdomen. The surgery was even riskier for the elderly or those suffering from hypertension or lung disease.

For these reasons, a stent (artificial net) graft, a non-surgical procedure, was often used instead of the open-heart surgery. The stent graft restores the blood passage by inserting a tube through a small incision in order to find a blocked area and graft the stent there. The risk is low compared to the open heart surgery, but it is difficult to treat arteries that are intertwined or with severe sclerosis

Hybrid surgery is the latest surgical technology that combines above two methods; creating a bypass only for the vessels that are severely intertwined for the stent procedure, and treating the rest with the stent. In the past, only one method was used per a patient. “We can lower the risk of post-surgery complications by half, and also shorten the period of hospitalization from 7 days to 3~4 days as we now selectively combine surgical and non-surgical methods for each patient,” said Professor Jeongsup Yoon, a cardiovascular & thoracic surgeon of Incheon St. Mary’s Hospital.