MaineHealth coronary revascularization services help people who require heart bypass surgery. We specialize in coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) procedures and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), such as coronary angioplasty and stent placement. Coronary revascularization services help restore blood flow to hearts with diseased arteries (coronary artery disease).
During a CABG procedure, the surgeon attaches (grafts) a healthy vessel to the diseased or narrowed heart vessel. Blood then “bypasses” the diseased area and flows through the new vessel. During coronary angioplasty, an interventional cardiologist guides a balloon catheter with a wire mesh stent up to the heart and diseased vessel. The balloon is gently expanded against the artery walls, compressing any plaque build-up and leaving the expanded stent in place to allow for improved blood flow.
Achievements:
- MaineHealth Maine Medical Center (MHMMC) doctors performed Maine’s first coronary artery bypass surgery in 1972, and the first balloon angioplasty in 1982. Today, MHMMC not only performs more of these procedures (nearly 1,000 open heart surgeries annually) than any other hospital in Maine but also more than most hospitals in all of New England.
- Many coronary artery disease cases can now be diagnosed and treated with a minimally invasive technique called cardiac catheterization. More than 5,000 catheterization procedures (such as angiograms, angioplasties, and stent placements) are performed each year in MMC’s state-of-the-art catheterization lab, making it one of the highest-volume facilities in New England.
