Why did the doctor say the operation was successful even though my chest hurt like it was a medical emergency during stent surgery?

Many patients encounter this "strange" situation when undergoing stent surgery:

During the operation, you may experience chest pain and tightness similar to a medical emergency, which may last for half a day after the operation before disappearing.

The patient was worried that something went wrong with the operation, but the doctor said it was a success. What was going on?

This is because during the stent implantation process, a balloon is used to repeatedly expand the lesion at the location of the stenosis of the blood vessel. The narrow blood vessel lumen is expanded by the squeezing effect generated by the balloon expansion, restoring it to its normal size before the lesion. However, the expanded balloon can cause temporary blockage of the blood vessel, triggering myocardial ischemia, and thus symptoms similar to a seizure. Often, the thicker the blood vessel, the more diffuse the lesion, and the more operations are performed, the more obvious this reaction is.

With the successful implantation of the stent, the myocardial blood supply returns to normal and the chest pain symptoms usually disappear quickly, but may last for about a day. This is a normal surgical phenomenon and there is no need to worry.

I am Dr. Zhang from the Department of Cardiology. Follow me to learn more about heart disease. Goodbye!