LONDON, Sept 16: A new heart bypass surgery technique can reduce the risk of complications in overweight patients, doctors said on Monday.

“Off-pump” heart surgery is more complicated than the traditional bypass procedure because surgeons operate on a beating heart rather than stopping it and diverting the blood through a heart and lung bypass machine.

But researchers found it can reduce the number of deaths and risk of strokes and cuts the need for blood transfusions in overweight patients.

“This study found that off-pump, beating heart surgery is even more beneficial for this group of high-risk patients,” said Professor Gianni Angelini of the University of Bristol, who studied the impact of the technique on high-risk patients.

“This is in line with our theory that because overweight patients are considered to be more challenging surgical candidates, the outcome of operations might be improved if the added risk associated with on-pump surgery were eliminated,” he added.

Angelini and his team tracked the medical history and complication rate of 2,844 overweight patients who underwent bypass surgery for a five-year period beginning in April 1996.

They found that the odds of some complications were reduced by more than half and the others were cut by a third to a half.

Professor Sir Charles George, Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation which funded the research, said rising levels of obesity will mean that more overweight people will be needing heart operations.

“Any procedure that improves patient safety, particularly for higher risk groups, should be encouraged,” George said in a statement.—Reuters