Why bypass surgery and stents don't cure cardiovacular disease

Why bypass surgery and stents don't cure cardiovacular disease

Bypass surgery and stents are used commonplace these days as ways of alleviating symptoms caused by blockages in the coronary arteries. In the USA alone there will be a staggering 240,000 bypass surgeries and 2 million stent procedures performed this year alone!

Stents are wire mesh tubes which have a balloon which inflates when inserted into the artery, while bypass surgery uses a length of blood vessel from another part of the body to circumnavigate the blocked artery and provide essential blood flow to the heart to keep it functioning.

Bypass surgery and stents are band aids which prolong life, provide temporary relief of pain nad suffering and damage to the heart, but they don’t solve the cause of the problem of why the blockages are happening in the first place or prevent further disease.

Because people gain immediate benefit/reward from their debilitating symptoms, they will typically continue doing what they were doing before the blockage, but now do not have the painful markers and debilitating symptoms to let them know there is still an ongoing problem.

By continuing in the same way living the same lifestyle which caused the blockage in the first place, more blockages will follow causing more damage and disease to the heart leading to debilitation and premature death.

Relief with bypass surgery is typically temporary with the vessels used for bypassing blocked arteries eventually scarring and suddenly closing causing a heart attack, requiring further bypass surgery to be performed.

What’s more there are significant dangers to having bypass surgery or stents with on average a 2.4% chance of dying and another 5% chance of sustaining a stroke or heart attack during a bypass procedure, and 4% chance of having a heart attack during a stent procedure and 1% of patients dying during it.

So with more than 2 million stents performed in the USA alone each year that equates to 80,000 people having heart attacks during the procedure and 20,000 dying during it!

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