Minimally Invasive Bypass Surgery

Sunnybrook’s Schulich Heart Centre became the first centre in Toronto to perform minimally invasive, beating-heart bypass surgery to fix clogged arteries and improve blood flow to the heart.

Both conventional bypass surgery and minimally invasive coronary artery bypass grafting restore blood flow to the heart when there is a buildup of plaque inside the blood vessels. The advantage of using a minimally invasive technique rather than the traditional approach is that it allows the surgeon to work on a beating heart through a small chest incision (small thoracotomy) without having to split the breastbone and place patients on a heart-and-lung machine while surgeons work on the stopped heart. 

“Offering a minimally invasive alternative to traditional bypass surgery will have extraordinary benefits for our patients,” says Dr. Fuad Moussa, cardiac surgeon at Sunnybrook’s Schulich Heart Centre. “While we have been performing conventional bypass surgery successfully for many years, the new techniques we are now introducing at Sunnybrook minimize operative risks and patient trauma associated with opening up the chest and stopping the heart. This means patients can often return home after only a few days and resume many normal activities within a couple of weeks rather than a couple of months.”

Every year in Ontario, approximately 7,000 people with coronary artery disease benefit from having bypass surgery. Unfortunately, there are some cases where patients with two or three blocked arteries would benefit from surgical intervention but are not well enough to withstand conventional bypass surgery.

Sunnybrook is one of only a few health sciences centres in Canada currently offering this surgical alternative to traditional bypass surgery.