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Recovering from my quadruple bypass surgery while the world went into lockdown
“I remember thinking my throat was constricted and my tongue felt as if it had been anaesthetized at the dentist,” Danièle Wiseman explains.
While driving from a work event, Danièle started to struggle with her breathing, so she pulled over at the side of the road. “I wondered if there was something constricting my windpipe or something wrong with my lungs,” Danièle says. She called 111 and was put straight through to the emergency services. Using the app What3Words, the ambulance was able to locate her quickly, and she was checked over.
Danièle saw a doctor the following day to get some answers, but was misdiagnosed with having a panic attack. She had similar symptoms again over the weekend and returned to see her GP, who arranged a Cardiac MRI. The scan showed scarring on her heart indicating a heart attack which led to a referral to a cardiologist. The cardiologist decided heart bypass surgery was needed, given Danièle’s age and the extent of the blockages they found in her arteries. The operation took place a week later. “I felt like you do when getting up for a really early flight, slightly out of place on the space-time continuum. I walked into the theatre and was anaesthetized for the operation. That’s all I remember from the operation until I woke up in the intensive care unit.”
Danièle went home shortly after her operation and was told to take it easy during her recovery. “As my recovery began to allow me to do more and more, at that same time the nation and the world, were being restricted in what they could do due to the Covid-19 outbreak”, Danièle remembers. Although recovery was tough and Danièle couldn’t leave her home, she did enjoy having her family around. “It wasn’t marvellous for my family as their lives were interrupted, but it was lovely for me to have my eldest daughter home from university and my husband working from home.” Since lockdown, Danièle has made great progress returning to work and has even managed to go on holiday to Greece with her family.
Which blood vessels should be used as grafts for coronary artery bypass surgery?
Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is a procedure used to treat people diagnosed with coronary heart disease. During CABG, surgeons use a piece of blood vessel taken from the leg, arm or chest to bypass a narrowed section of one or more coronary arteries supplying the heart. Most patients undergoing CABG have several narrowed areas in their coronary arteries, requiring more than one piece of ‘bypass’ vessel.
The current standard way of performing CABG is to use one of the two arteries supplying blood to each side of the inner chest (the internal thoracic artery). Surgeons then use additional vessel grafts if they are needed. This will normally be pieces of vein taken from the leg, or pieces of artery taken from the arm. This procedure is usually successful at relieving symptoms in the short term. But grafted vessels, particularly veins, can become blocked or diseased over time. This can lead to symptoms returning and the need for further treatment.
An international team of researchers - led by Professor David Taggart at the University of Oxford - wanted to find out if a using both internal thoracic arteries, which is a less common procedure, could lead to better long-term outcomes for people having CABG.