A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that 160,000 of those patients risk losing some of their mental ability. There's a new surgery that bypasses the heart-lung machine. Dale Sparrow recently had a quadruple bypass. I can't complain. In traditional bypass, a patient's heart is stopped while surgeons work.
Blood continues to flow through the body via the heart-lung machine.
But there are risks of losing brain power. Dale's wife Mary had a triple bypass a few months before his. She was placed on the heart-lung machine and not only had complications, but mentally, she's not the same. Research shows that there are fewer problems with the brain after the beating heart surgery. Dale Sparrow is living proof that the beating heart surgery has strong benefits with little impact on the brain.