Is there long-term brain damage after bypass surgery?
Brain scientists and cardiac surgeons at Johns Hopkins have evidence from 227 heart bypass surgery patients that long-term memory losses and cognitive problems they experience are due to the underlying coronary artery disease itself and not ill after-effects from having used a heart-lung machine. Researchers say their latest findings explain study results presented last year, which showed that the heart-lung machines – used to pump blood and supply the body with oxygen while the heart is stopped during surgery – did not cause postoperative long-term brain deficits. “Our results hammer home the message that heart-lung machines are not to be blamed for cognitive declines observed years later in people who have had bypass surgery,” says lead study investigator Ola A. Selnes, Ph.D., a professor in the Division of Cognitive Neuroscience in the neurology department at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The new results stand in contrast to the impact of heart-lung machines on so
