So sorry to hear what you and your husband are going through.
Was hoping you could let me know how you discovered that your husband had such a blocked artery (90 percent)?
I am his age and feel as though maybe I have similar issues.
Anything you could say would help me out alot.
Take care!
For some insight and statistics. The harvested veins themselves can block over time, this may result in part simply from the trauma from the surgery, in other words, by removing the vein from the leg and then sewing it to the heart. The incidence of veins blocking remains high despite advances in anti-platelet and cholesterol medications.
Arterial grafts are preferred to venous grafts and have a better patency rate. A grafted vessel has to carry arterial blood not the venous blood. The mean coronary arterial pressure is around 40mmhg and this will damage the saphenous venous endothelium more quickly. The reocculsion rate at 10 years for venous grafts can reach 60%.
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"Saphenous vein grafts (SVG) remain the most widely used conduit for CABG. However, contemporary patency rates at one-year post CABG remain poor, despite optimal medical therapy. Recent trials (PREVENT IV) demonstrate that up to 45% of all patients have one or more SVG occluded at angiography one year post-CABG; up to 25% of all SVG are occluded at one year post-CABG angiography. Furthermore, patients with at least one SVG occluded had twice the incidence of perioperative MI, and thirteen times the composite endpoint of death, late MI or repeat revascularization at 12-18 months".
Better results with the left internal mammary artery (LIMA) and is the most commonly used arterial graft. LIMA patency rates at 10 years is nearly 90 % .But the graft patency depends on many factors , like diabetes, age, gender, surgical technique.
At your husband's young age, it appears after several years there may be further intervention unless proper diet, etc. can prevent any progression of occlusions.
Thanks for your question and if there are any followup, you are welcome to respond. Take care.
Due to your husbands age, and as it was a single bypass, I would be very surprised if he didn't have an artery graft rather than a vein. You can easily confirm this with the cardiologist.
I had a triple bypass in Sept 07 and by the end of Nov 07 both veins collapsed, but the main artery graft was still intact. I can tell you that I certainly knew when this happened. It was as though the oxygen content in the atmosphere had suddenly dropped by 80%, causing me to gasp for air for about 20 mins. It did settle down, but it was so obvious something had gone wrong. I also started to get angina again, with throat, chest and jaw discomforts and obviously shortness of breath.
A simply way to tell if it's due to a blockage, is if the discomfort gets worse with exercise. I know it probably sounds silly, but a couple of weeks ago I had a stomach bug which felt just like heart symptoms. To test this, I ran up the stairs when the discomfort appeared, just to see if it got any worse. It didn't, even though my pulse increased, there was no extra discomfort at all. I then felt sure it wasn't heart related. A week later the pains all vanished.
One thing I did notice from my bypass experience is that although all the usual pains had gone after around 12 months, it was still very easy to pull muscles after that for about another year. It took a very long time for my chest muscles to fully recover to the point that I had the same strength as before the bypass. I met other patients in cardiac rehab who had received bypass surgery as far back as five years and still found odd chest pains in the muscles.