How Heart Bypass Operations Work

Since the heart is a muscle, it relies on the oxygen and nutrients contained in blood. This blood is supplied by arteries on the exterior of the heart -- when these arteries are blocked, a heart attack results. Take a look at our HowStuffWorks article to

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:22):
Brain with today's question. What is a heart bypass operation?
Your heart is an amazing organ. It beats thousands of
times each day, every day for your entire life. In
the process, it pumps about five million gallons of blood
through your body. Since the heart is a muscle, it
needs blood for the oxygen and nutrients it contains, but

(00:45):
it can't use the blood it's pumping. Instead, there are
arteries on the outside of the heart that provide the
blood that the muscle needs. If one of these outer
arteries gets clogged, it causes a heart attack. A blockage
like this is normally caused by fatty deposits that build
up in the hearts arteries over the course of many years.

(01:06):
Everything you hear about fat in the diet, cholesterol, coronary
artery disease, and clogged arteries is focused on this problem.
It turns out that blocked heart arteries and the heart
attacks they cause are a leading killer in the United States.
When one of the hearts arteries gets blocked and a
person has a heart attack, one common treatment is heart

(01:28):
bypass surgery. They sew in a new piece of blood
vessel to bridge over or bypass the blockage in an artery.
In many cases, the surgeon will fix not only the
immediate problem, but also other arteries on the heart that
are starting to look blocked. If the surgeon repairs three
of the arteries, it's called a triple bypass operation. If

(01:51):
four arteries are repaired, that's a quadruple bypass. The blood
vessel used to create the bypass is taken from the
chest or the leg. The body has several redundant vessels
that are removed without doing any harm. Do you have
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(02:11):
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