What is cardiac stent surgery

  Cardiac stenting is a new technique that has been developed in the last 20 years to improve the lack of blood supply to the heart muscle caused by coronary heart disease and blockage of the heart arteries. Simply put, the procedure of cardiac stenting treatment involves puncturing a blood vessel, allowing the catheter to travel forward in the vessel to the opening of the coronary artery, delivering the stent to the site where it needs to be placed using a special delivery system, placing and withdrawing the catheter, and ending the procedure. The patient undergoes the procedure under local anesthesia and is usually out of bed 24 hours after the puncture, which is not a complicated procedure. The patient can usually be discharged three days after the operation.  After stenting, the blood vessel is opened, the original ischemic heart muscle gets blood supply, and the condition is relieved, but it cannot be considered that the coronary heart disease is cured, because the stent can continue to “grow” atherosclerotic plaque, making the lumen of the blood vessel narrow again. The latest drug-coated stents can reduce the incidence of restenosis in the stent from 20% to less than 10%, which can provide a lifeline for more patients with coronary heart disease.  So, under what circumstances can stenting be done?  Cardiologists agree that as long as patients do not have bleeding disorders and can lie flat on the operating table, they can basically undergo stent surgery. Patients with recurrent angina should go to the hospital early to confirm the diagnosis and to determine whether stenting is needed after coronary angiography.  It must be emphasized that although cardiac stenting is not complicated, it is not the same as the procedure being risk-free. After all, the patient undergoing the surgery is a patient with coronary artery disease and the site of the surgery is a blood vessel in the heart, so coronary stenting is a risky procedure. The fact that a stent opens and unblocks a blocked or soon-to-be-blocked blood vessel does not mean that this vessel or this site will not become narrowed or blocked again. In order to prevent the reoccurrence of blood vessel lesions, some medications are needed to control the risk factors of coronary heart disease.