Treating Heart Disease

You don’t need to live with chronic chest pain. Treatments for coronary heart disease may include medicine, open heart surgery, and/or less invasive procedures such as angioplasty.

Medicine for Heart Disease

Most people with heart disease take medicine to manage their condition and help prevent a heart attack.

Your doctor may prescribe medicine to help lower your blood pressure and cholesterol. And some people may take a low-dose aspirin or other anti-clotting medicine to reduce the chance of a heart attack. In addition to medicines like these, doctors usually recommend controlled exercise and a low-fat diet. And they always recommend you quit smoking.

After surgery or other interventions, you may still have a medication plan. It is important to follow your doctor’s instructions about medicine, and let him or her know about other medicines you may be taking.

Treating Clogged Arteries

Angioplasty and Heart Stents

One of the options to treat clogged arteries is a minimally invasive treatment known as angioplasty.

In this procedure, a very small balloon is inserted into the clogged artery and inflated to push the plaque build-up against the wall of the artery. In heart disease patients who have undergone balloon angioplasty, re-blockage can occur. In fact, it occurs in up to 50% of all patients who have undergone an angioplasty. This re-blockage is called restenosis, and may require another procedure to re-open the artery. To help reduce the risk of re-blockage and keep the treated arteries open, stents are used in the vast majority of angioplasties.

Stents are small, mesh metal tubes that prop open the heart's blood vessels.

The stent procedure may involve the use of a drug-coated stent or an uncoated stent.

Learn more about heart stents

Learn more about the risk of re-blockage 

Open Heart Surgery

Open heart surgery is sometimes called a “bypass” operation, or a coronary artery bypass graft.

A section of vein or artery is put in as a coronary artery bypass. This bypass creates new pathways around narrowed or blocked arteries to allow for enough blood flow to deliver oxygen to the heart.

There are benefits and risks associated with each coronary heart disease treatment. Your doctor can discuss these with you to help determine which best fits your needs, and offers the best opportunity to help give you the quality of life you seek.