What percentage of block in the artery would make bypass surgery indispensable?
It’s not a certain percentage of blockage, but how a patient responds to medical management and WHERE the blockage is (and how many blockages). If a patient has a severe vessel disease where more than 3 vessels have blockages, and the left main coronary arteries are blocked. In that case, the PTCA and stents may not be an option. In that case, the cardiothoracic surgeon takes a graft from the sapphenous vein in the leg or the Left Internal Mammary artery and grafts around the blockage, or puts the patient on a heparin gtt based on weight and starting bolus dose. Bypass surgery and angioplasty are two different invasive approaches, and there’s only so much medicine will be able to do based on the patient’s response and location of blockage.
