George W. Bush Undergoes Heart Surgery

The office of George W. Bush revealed the former president had heart surgery Tuesday morning.

According to a press release, doctors discovered a blockage in an artery in Bush's heart during the former president's annual physical examination at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas.

Bush agreed to have a stent placed to open the blockage and successfully completed the surgery Tuesday morning without complication at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

My daughter-in-law, who passed away a year ago June at a young age was also a heart-transplant patient at OSU Ross Heart Hospital. Three years after receiving the transplant, her body for some reason rejected it. She was admitted back into the hospital, the doctors were stumped, and she never got to come home again. She suffered 4 heart attacks the morning of her death which she survived, but the 4th one took her.

Just to “define it” the FACS defines surgery as:

“Surgery is performed for the purpose of structurally altering the human body by incision or destruction of tissues and is part of the practice of medicine. Surgery also is the diagnostic or therapeutic treatment of conditions or disease processes by any instruments causing localized alteration or transportation of live human tissue, which include lasers, ultrasound, ion- izing, radiation, scalpels, probes, and needles. The tissue can be cut, burned, vaporized, frozen, sutured, probed, or manipulated by closed reduction for major dislocations and fractures, or otherwise altered by any mechanical, thermal, light-based, electromagnetic, or chemical means. Injection of diagnostic or therapeutic substances into body cavities, internal organs, joints, sensory organs, and the central nervous system is also considered to be surgery (this does not include admin- istration by nursing personnel of some injections, such as subcutaneous, intramuscular, and intravenous when ordered by a physician). All of these surgical procedures are invasive, including those that are performed with lasers, and the risks of any surgical intervention are not eliminated by using a light knife or laser in place of a metal knife or scalpel. Patient safety and quality of care are paramount, and the College therefore believes that patients should be assured that individuals who perform these types of surgery are licensed physicians (defined as doctors of medicine or osteopathy) who meet appropriate professional standards.”

They cut into you—whether it be by needle, razor, hack saw, or scalpel—it is surgery.

Of course, there are varying degrees of it. But “procedure” is shorthand for surgical procedure. Done by a surgeon.

My Dad also had a “natural bypass”. When he was in his fifties, he had a temporary blockage, but the blood detoured into this vessel his body had created, so he didn’t have much damage, and did not have to have surgery at that time.

He was 80 years old before he had to have heart surgery, and lived to be 84. If not for heavy smoking during his young adult years which led to lung fibrosis, he might have lived much longer.

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