Arteries are much better than veins. It is an hour of pain in exchange for 15 years of duration of the bypass. Then the artery is out of Nally's arm. It looks like a worm pulled from the ground on a wet morning. The gaping arm wound is washed then sewn and reinforced with metal staples.
Arteries used in bypasses remain open longer than veins.
The human body is a machine with a great variety of useful redundancies, that is built-in spare parts, explains Dr. Timothy Gilbert, the anesthesiologist on the operation. The blood delivered by the now lost radial artery in the patient's left arm will be supplied by another artery, Gilbert explains, just as the blood the mammary artery carried to the groin area will be delivered by other vessels put in place by nature. Whitman is now over the chest cavity and Saum has moved to the left side of the patient. Both physicians work with scalpels to bring the mammary artery into shape. It looks to the naked eye like a formless piece of tissue, rather than as a useful tube for carrying oxygenated blood.