5. Redo (Reoperation)

Q: When reoperation (another open-heart surgery) is necessary?

Long-term after the surgery such as 5-30 years, artificial valve maybe worn out, or the patient’s tissue around the valve grows and interferes the valve motion, and reoperation may become necessary. Sometimes other valves or vessels are diseased, which makes reoperation necessary.

Q： What kinds of concerns are there in the reoperation?

During the reoperation, the heart adheses (sticks to) the surrounding tissue or organs and surgeons have to dissect the heart safely before entering the heart. Thus, reoperation identifies experiences and skills of the surgeons more than initial surgery. Experienced surgeons and teams can do reoperations nearly as safely as initial surgery, but inexperienced team often suffer from problems. In addition to the adhesion, patients who undergo reoperation usually have long-term heart diseases and even other organs’, and thus they are more fragile than the patients with initial heart surgery. That is why more skillful surgery and treatment is necessary for patients with reoperation.

For years we put higher priority to reoperations and we have achieved very good results of reoperations including 3rd time or 4th time ones. For example, about 9 years ago, we did 4th time operation for patients who came from Korea and we replaced 3 valves at the same time. She had had 2 heart surgery in USA years before. We reported the case in the meeting in 2000.