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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house Stuff Works dot com,

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Speaker 1: where smart Happens, brought to you by Visa. We all

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Speaker 1: and resolves online fraud safe Secure Visa. Hi, I'm Marshall

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Speaker 1: Brain with today's question. What is a heart bypass operation?

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Speaker 1: Your heart is an amazing organ. It beats thousands of

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Speaker 1: times each day, every day for your entire life. In

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Speaker 1: the process, it pumps about five million gallons of blood

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Speaker 1: through your body. Since the heart is a muscle, it

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Speaker 1: needs blood for the oxygen and nutrients it contains, but

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Speaker 1: it can't use the blood it's pumping. Instead, there are

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Speaker 1: arteries on the outside of the heart that provide the

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Speaker 1: blood that the muscle needs. If one of these outer

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Speaker 1: arteries gets clogged, it causes a heart attack. A blockage

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Speaker 1: like this is normally caused by fatty deposits that build

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Speaker 1: up in the hearts arteries over the course of many years.

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Speaker 1: Everything you hear about fat in the diet, cholesterol, coronary

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Speaker 1: artery disease, and clogged arteries is focused on this problem.

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Speaker 1: It turns out that blocked heart arteries and the heart

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Speaker 1: attacks they cause are a leading killer in the United States.

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Speaker 1: When one of the hearts arteries gets blocked and a

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Speaker 1: person has a heart attack, one common treatment is heart

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Speaker 1: bypass surgery. They sew in a new piece of blood

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Speaker 1: vessel to bridge over or bypass the blockage in an artery.

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Speaker 1: In many cases, the surgeon will fix not only the

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Speaker 1: immediate problem, but also other arteries on the heart that

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Speaker 1: are starting to look blocked. If the surgeon repairs three

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Speaker 1: of the arteries, it's called a triple bypass operation. If

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Speaker 1: four arteries are repaired, that's a quadruple bypass. The blood

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Speaker 1: vessel used to create the bypass is taken from the

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Speaker 1: chest or the leg. The body has several redundant vessels

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Speaker 1: that are removed without doing any harm. Do you have

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Speaker 1: any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please

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Speaker 1: send me an email at podcast at how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

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Speaker 1: go to how stuff works dot com.