Surgical Services
Heart Surgery
Open-Heart Surgery
Bay Medical established the area’s only open-heart surgery program in 1984 and performs nearly 400 open-heart surgeries each year. This procedure is available to patients with a wide range of heart problems including defects and blockages. The cardiothoracic team at Bay Medical has training in many specialized procedures including beating-heart surgery.
During this type of surgery, Bay Medical surgeons use a special piece of equipment to stabilize the section of the heart being operated on, keeping that section motionless during the procedure. The heart continues to beat and circulate blood and the complications involved with temporarily stopping and then restarting the heart are reduced. While this option can’t be used in every case, physicians at Bay Medical are using it when possible for coronary artery bypass graft surgeries, atrial fibrillation surgeries, aortic and mitral valve repairs or replacements, and ventricular reconstruction surgeries.
Endoscopic Vein Harvesting
For bypass surgery, a vein is often removed from the leg to construct a bypass graft around the blocked arteries in the heart. At Bay Medical, we use a less invasive, endoscopic method of harvesting the vein to limit additional pain during the recovery from bypass surgery.