What is the difference between stop-beat and non-stop bypass surgery?

  The earliest conventional coronary artery bypass surgery was performed with the heart in cardiac arrest, requiring an extracorporeal circulation machine to temporarily replace the patient’s heart and lungs during the procedure. In recent years, with advances in surgical techniques and the advent of adjunctive surgical devices, procedures have emerged that do not require the heart to be stopped during surgery, but rather the vascular anastomosis is performed directly on the beating heart. There are advantages and disadvantages to both surgical approaches. Among them, the beating bypass has less impact on the function of other organs of the patient, and the patient recovers quickly after surgery with less bleeding, but the surgical technique is demanding and there is a risk of intraoperative cardiac arrest and other risks. And there is a risk of incomplete recanalization. Bypass surgery under cardiac arrest can achieve revascularization as much as possible, but it may have certain impact on the function of other organs of the patient and the postoperative recovery is relatively slow. Wan Feng, the director of cardiac surgery in our hospital, is the first cardiac surgeon in China to perform non-stop bypass, and his non-stop surgery technique is the absolute leader in China, which can achieve complete revascularization and thus completely solve the patient’s problem.