Heart bypass patients’ risk of dying jumps 80% after ten years

THE chance of heart bypass surgery patients dying increases by 80 per cent after the first decade, a study has found.

Patients who have bypass operations have good survival rates before this – and their chances of death are similar to the rest of the population.

But after eight to ten years ‘something happens’ which leads to a steep rise in chances of death, according to the scientists who carried out the study.

Bypass surgery involves grafting blood vessels taken from other parts of the body to divert blood around narrowed or clogged parts of the coronary arteries. Scientists at Aarhus University in Denmark studied 51,000 Danes who had bypasses between 1980 and 2009 and compared their chances of survival with equivalent people from the general population.

The researchers were not sure of the reason for the dramatic worsening, but they said it may be because the underlying condition of hardening of the arteries that caused a blockage in the first place may have graudally worsened, or because the grafts no longer work so well.