What types of heart diseases are treated with surgery?
Sometimes it takes more than medicine to treat heart disease. In this video, cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Emile Bacha discusses when and why heart disease requires surgery.
Transcript
That's kids who are born with heart malformations. That, typically, are things like holes inside their hearts or narrowed valves.
And that's obviously not something you can fix with medication. [UPBEAT MUSIC]
A lot of different types of heart disease are treated with surgery, valve heart disease.
So disease that affects the heart valves most commonly are treated with surgery.
Of course, I'll say that you always have to try nonsurgical approaches first for any kind of heart disease.
If a medicine fails, then typically you resort to surgery or interventional cardiology in the Cath Lab.
But valve disease is something that's very commonly treated with surgery. Coronary artery disease is something
that's very commonly treated with surgery. And then, congenital heart defects are very commonly treated with heart surgery.
Congenital heart defects being what I practice. And that's kids who are born with heart malformations.
That, typically, are things like holes inside their hearts or narrowed valves. And that's obviously not something
you can fix with medication. You can't fix a hole inside somebody's heart with a pill. So that's something that requires surgery.
heart disease
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