Heart surgery
For some
people with heart disease, surgery is the best treatment option
currently available.
Surgical techniques have improved a great deal over the years as
our understanding of heart conditions grows.
More research is vital to help us reduce the risk and
trauma of surgery, as well as improve ways to replace surgical
procedures with alternatives.
Past innovations
The future for heart surgery
Reducing rejection
Heart transplant is a successful procedure, but the medicines
transplant patients must take to control their immune responses
against their new heart leave them more vulnerable to illness.
We are funding projects aiming to reveal how we
can stop this rejection, and help patients stay healthy
for longer.
Transfusion risk
Recent research by Prof
Angelini's Bristol team has shown that blood
tranfusions during surgery can cause health complications. They
hope
their research will lead to evidence-based
guidelines on which patients really need extra blood.
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Positive steps for patient care
Your donations have supported important innovations in
patient care during coronary heart disease surgery for several
decades. In the 1970s one in 10 patients died following surgery
compared with nearer one in 100 today.
Protecting the heart during surgery
In the 1970s along with the Wellcome Trust
we funded a team from St Thomas’ Hospital to develop a way to
protect the heart while its blood supply is cut off during surgery.
They developed the St Thomas' Hospital Cardioplegic
Solution - a liquid mixture that can preserve and protect the
heart, giving surgeons more time to operate safely. It's been
used in operating theatres around the world and has helped
thousands of hearts recover from surgery.
More recent research
suggests that restricting blood flow to the arm could help to
protect hearts during surgery.
Heart transplant success
Our pioneering research with Professors Sir Magdi
Yacoub and Sir Terence English in the 1980s played a big part in
making the heart
transplant a surgical success story. And today,
half the hearts transplanted ten years ago are still
going strong for people who would otherwise have had only months to
live.
Helping failing hearts
Sir Magdi has also led innovations in surgery to help failing
hearts recover. Read about Hannah Clark's piggy-back heart and the
team's discovery that a combination of mechanical intervention
and the right drugs can bring some peoples' hearts back
from the brink.
Beating heart surgery
BHF Professor Gianni
Angelini in Bristol has developed techniques allowing
the heart to keeping beating during coronary artery bypass
operations. Short-term, this showed fewer post-surgery
complications for patients. We are still supporting Angelini
to assess the longer term benefits for heart patients.
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