Do I need to continue taking medication after heart bypass surgery?

There are many patients who think that after coronary artery bypass surgery, the stenosis of heart vessels has disappeared and they can live like normal people from now on and do not need to take medicine anymore. In fact, this is not true. Heart bypass surgery is the ideal treatment for coronary heart disease. The surgery often has an immediate effect, and most patients’ symptoms can disappear immediately after the surgery, but it also causes many patients to ignore the long-term maintenance treatment problem after the surgery. First, let’s be clear that heart bypass surgery does not cure coronary heart disease; the primary role of our procedure is to prevent the risk of serious cardiac events (e.g., severe myocardial infarction, sudden death). However, coronary artery disease is a lifelong disease, so medication must be continued to prevent further progression of coronary artery disease. Secondly, there is a possibility of restenosis of the graft after the bypass surgery. In order to maintain the efficacy in the long term, we hope that patients will develop good habits after the surgery, pay attention to regular rest, moderate diet (low salt, low fat, low sugar), moderate exercise, avoid overexertion, calm mind, cooperate with medication, and do regular review to understand your current heart condition, so as to maintain the efficacy in the long term. We have found an important issue in our long-term follow-up, and we would like to ask you and your family to pay extra attention to it here: After surgery, we would ask for long-term aspirin, 100 mg (milligrams) once a day, and patients are usually told to take one tablet daily. However, there are currently two doses of this drug in our market, which means that different manufacturers have different doses of each drug, and there are two common ones: 25 mg and 100 mg. Some patients do not pay attention when buying the drug and buy a 25 mg tablet, but still take only 1 tablet, which will result in an insufficient dose of antiplatelet and very easy to cause other complications. We would like to remind all patients and family members, especially those of elderly patients, to pay attention to the fact that when taking aspirin, it should be 100 mg per dose, not 1 tablet!