Contact: Marguerite Beck



                               MEDIA ADVISORY


Reporters, editors: Roland Hartsook of Gordonsville, U.Va.'s first patient to 
have this procedure, and Dr. Kron will be available on Tuesday, April 16, at 
10:30 a.m. to answer questions. Please contact Marguerite Beck at 
804-924-5679 if you will be attending the briefing.

	Surgeons at the University of Virginia Medical Center are among the 
first in the state to perform a new, less invasive type of heart bypass 
surgery, one of the most common techniques used to treat blocked or narrowed 
arteries.
	Bypass surgery usually requires opening up the chest by breaking the 
sternum or breastbone and making a long incision down the middle of the chest 
to gain access to the heart and arteries. The new procedure requires only a 
small incision -- about four to five inches -- in the left side of the chest 
between the third and fourth ribs. 
	"This less invasive procedure cuts the length of hospitalization and 
the cost of surgery in half," said Dr. Irving Kron, chief of the thoracic 
cardiovascular surgery division at U.Va. "More importantly, this procedure is 
much less stressful to the patient than traditional bypass surgery because 
you have a much smaller incision and you don't have to break any bones. And 
the post operative recovery period is much shorter, so that people can get 
back to normal activity sooner." 
 	The new procedure works best for patients with single vessel disease, 
which is approximately one to five percent of patients with heart disease, 
Kron said. Currently, most patients with single vessel disease are treated 
with angioplasty, a tiny balloon inserted into the blood vessel to widen the 
obstructed part of the vessel.  The less invasive bypass procedure may prove 
to be a better treatment than repeat angioplasty because it should last 
indefinitely, whereas angioplasty occasionally has to be repeated.
	Kron said that five patients have been treated with this procedure 
since it was first introduced at U.Va. in March.

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Television reporters should contact the Television News office at 804-924-7550.


						April 12, 1996