My husband is having an angiogram tomorrow. If necessary, they’ll go ahead and do angioplasty. What can we expect? I guess the procedure takes about 2 hours. How long is the recovery time? Is there much pain or discomfort? Any major risks? What if he does need the angioplasty? Will he need to spend the night? Major lifestyles changes? We both quit smoking 2/15/08, he exercises 3-5 times a week and doesn’t eat much junk (aside from the occassional ice cream and cookies jones.) He does need to lose about 20 lbs, which he’s working on. He likes to do Atkins to “jump start” his diet, but is this a good idea?
I plan on dropping him off in the morning and heading back over once he’s in recovery. Or, is this the type of thing I should stay there for? Am I not taking this seriously enough by going back to work or is it not that big of a deal? He thinks I don’t need to stay.
I had one on March 21 – the angiogram showed a 90% blockage in the LAD, so they did an angioplasty & stent. I had to stay in the hospital overnight & was released the next day. As I understand it, the recovery time if no angioplasty is performed is more along the lines of 6-8 hours; I was told to be prepared to spend the entire day there. You should probably do likewise – if an angioplasty is required, the doc will want to talk to you before it happens. Bring a book or two.
Complications are rare, but not unheard of; the procedure is pretty routine these days. If your facility does a lot of them, they should be able to handle just about anything that pops up, especially if it’s at or very near a hospital. When I had mine, the most pain I had was from the IV on the back of my hand – there was very little pain at the catheter site in the groin. Anyway, I was pretty well out of it for the actual procedure; I’m allergic to shellfish, so they gave me drugs for that (including Benadryl, which really turns my lights out).
Sounds like your husband has already made most of the necessary lifestyle changes. If he needs an angioplasty, he’ll be placed on a blood thinner, probably Plavix or warfarin, as well as a cholesterol drug (if he isn’t already on one). The blood thinners take a bit of getting used to – I’ve had a major nosebleed (and lots of minor ones) since being on Plavix.
You should probably ask the doc about diet; Atkins may not be the best diet for your husband’s condition. Also ask about aspirin therapy; your doc may prescribe it even without your asking, but it doesn’t hurt to bring it up.
Hope you’ve got good insurance. I was charged over $30,000, but my insurance paid $13,000. My out-of-pocket was just the standard $10 copay.
3waygeek has had a more recent experience than me, but very similar. I’ve never been knocked out for the procedure in any way; just a local anesthetic injected where they cut into the artery in my groin. I’ve never been released any sooner than the day after the procedure, but it has been typical to get out the next day with the angioplasties that were not immediately preceded by M.I.'s.
As far as the angioplasty, here’s what my last couple were like. They roll you in and shave the groin where they’ll cut in. They start some dye into your bloodstream through an IV on your arm. They cut into the artery and run the tube up to the blockage. They run the balloon into the blockage and inflate it. They keep it inflated for a while, and it starts to hurt a little. You chat with the doctor about how it’s going and how much it hurts, and he lets the blood through for a while. (You can see it all live on the TV that’s hanging over your body.) Rinse and repeat as necessary. They pull the long bloody thing out of you and nowadays insert some kind of plug to close the cut in your groin (much better than the old 24-hours with a sandbag routine). Really, not too bad. And way easier to take than it was a couple decades ago.
As far as blood thinners, I take aspirin. No warfarin or Plavix. But the doctor will discuss what, if anything, is appropriate. Just remember, you’re the customer, and your concerns matter, too. I agree that you might want to stick around till at least the decision is made whether the angioplasty is needed. Once they’re rolling, though, the procedure hasn’t taken a long time for me. The worst was my first (it was pretty primitive then) and it took just under three hours. The most recent was under an hour.
Lifestyle changes? Well, I eat a lot more vegetables than I used to. I’ve lost some weight. I think I need to lose more, but my cardiologist says I’m ok. I’m active and I try to stay happy.
I would hang around, if I were you. I had an angiogram about 11 years ago, and it lead to CABG x4 a few days after that. Apparenly, my arteries were blocked in some funky places where they couldn’t do the cleaning/stent thing.
The doctor walked out as soon as he was finished, and told my wife, “Your husband is a very sick man.”
I had an angioplasty just before christmas, I had two stents fitted and was 37 at the time and (I thought) pretty fit and healthy. Most of the procedure was as described by others so I won’t repeat what they said.
The actual procedure lasted about an hour or so and my wife waited, although if anything had gone wrong standard procedure (here in the UK) is to take you straight in for bypass surgery. I assume something similar occurs in the USA. Typically this is necessary in less than 1% of cases and any fatalities are at an even lower rate than this. You can probably google the exact figures. To be honest a lot of it depends on the surgeon, the Professor who did mine did hundreds a year and so was quite practiced at them.
I wouldn’t describe the experience as pleasant as you are conscious throughout and can feel a lot of what is going on inside you. It was not unlike having a less severe pain to my original attack, this is due to the fact that the arteries are at least partly blocked by the wires during the procedure.
After the op. the main problem was waiting for the bleeding to stop from the incision due to the anticoagulants. I needed a pressure bandage.
It took a couple of weeks for the bruising to subside afterwards, but other than that no side effects.
Well…unpleasant and quite unexpected results. He has to have a triple bypass July 7th. We’re most impressed with his surgeon. She’s very confident and capable. Kind of hard to wrap our minds around this, just yet. Just wanted to let you know.
Thanks for letting us know. Bypass surgery, while not what you’d wish for, is not what it was in the old days. If you ask around, you’ll find a lot of people who’ve had one. My father had a quintuple in the mid-80’s and was very happy with the results.
That’s what happened to my dad - they scheduled him for quadruple bypass surgery a week and a half later, but the next day he had a heart attack and had the bypass a little early. That was, let me think, close to 20 years ago, and while he has a lot of medical problems, his heart is fine.
Sorry to hear that, but it’s not as bad as it seems, there were a number of people in my cardio rehab class who had had bypasses and they all made good recoveries, although obviously slower than if they just had an angioplasty.
I seem to recall one man who said that they took veins from somewhere in his chest rather than his legs and this had fewer scars etc. Don’t know if this is a common procedure where you are though.
“Really, not too bad”, heh?
HELP!!!
I am 50 yrs old and will probably be suffering thru this procedure in the near future. And I am SCARED STIFF. I have something bordering on a genuine psychological problem when it comes to medical stuff.
I’m the kind of guy who can’t stand the sight of a needle. (Literally. When I do a simple blood test, I close my eyes and look away because I get a bad, dizzy feeling just watching the nurse tear open the sterile wrapping from a needle) I don’t mind the brief sharp pain of being stabbed by the needle, but watching it be prepared, and then watching my blood fill up the tube makes me feel weak in the knees.
When I visit people in the hospital, I pretend to ignore the tubes dripping into and out of their bodies, while making casual conversation. But when I leave, I feel exhausted from the way my muscles tensed up (involuntarily) the whole time I was there.
There is no way I could sit still and watch someone cut into my groin.
The rational part of my brain knows I should stay calm. But the rest of my brain reacts differently.
Is it possible to do angioplasty without being awake the whole time?
I was scared stiff before the operation too. I was convinced I’d be in the unlucky 1%. As it happened it turned out ok.
Don’t worry about seeing the incision, it’s very unlikely you will. I certainly didn’t.
You can watch the operation going on inside you as they have screens up showing the results of the x-rays and the position of the tubes in your arteries. If you don’t want to look you can turn away from the screens.
I watched for a while, it was interesting, but scary. One minor side effect I forgot to mention earlier is that I turned out to be allergic to the dye, only a minor problem, as I was already on a drip some IV antihistemine was used. Soon cleared up (apprently my eyes went red and bloodshot like a hayfever attack).
I’ve not heard of anyone being anaesthetised in an angioplasty, but they might give you a tranquilizer of some kind. The hardest part is staying still while they are messing around inside you. I found myself gripping the edge of the gurney in order to not move.
Hope it goes well, please report back on how you got on.
