Heart Bypass Surgery: What to Prepare Beforehand

How to Prepare for Heart Bypass Surgery: Tests and Steps

Facing heart bypass surgery? Learn how to prepare, from cardiologist consultations to the ECG, stress test, echocardiography and coronary angiography.

By Digitals Blog Newsroom

Published July 22, 2021, 2:59 PM WIB 2 min read

If you have heart complaints or problems caused by narrowed blood vessels, your doctor will usually recommend heart bypass surgery. Before you have this operation, though, you should first find out what you need to prepare. Read on for the details.

Preparation You Need to Make

Before this surgery, you will usually be asked to consult a cardiologist several times. This is to find out whether you are able to have the operation yet. Besides consultations, patients are usually also asked to take a series of health tests.

The purpose of these tests is to examine your cardiovascular system. But that is not all: the condition of your lungs and your pulse will be checked too. The doctor will also look at any symptoms of heart disease you may feel, from how often they occur to how long they last.

Health Tests You Must Take Before Bypass Surgery

When you plan to have heart bypass surgery, a series of health tests is needed. One of them is the electrocardiography test, or ECG for short. The purpose of this test is to detect the electrical activity in the patient's heart.

Patients will also take other tests, including a stress test. This test includes imaging tests, such as an MRI and a PET scan of your heart. The purpose of this test is to find out whether your heart has a problem while you are active.

Next, you will also need an echocardiography test. Its purpose is to check the size and shape of the heart. This test will also show whether the heart has poor blood flow.

Before heart bypass surgery, patients will also have a coronary angiography, which is meant to find areas where the blood vessels are blocked. Beyond health tests, patients are also asked to stop drinking alcohol and smoking. Patients must even follow the eating and drinking rules recommended by the doctor.

Those are the things you can do before bypass surgery. If you want this procedure, preparation is needed first. The aim is to keep anything unwanted from happening during the operation. That is why a series of health tests matters so much when you want to have this procedure.