“How long is recovery after a heart stent?”

Recovery After a Heart Stent in Simple Terms

Getting a heart stent is a common procedure to open up blocked arteries and improve blood flow to the heart. Here’s what you can expect in terms of recovery:

Immediate Recovery

• Hospital Stay: You’ll likely stay in the hospital for a few hours to overnight. If all goes well, you might go home the same day or the next day.

Short-Term Recovery (First Week)

• Activity: Rest and avoid heavy activities for the first few days. You can slowly get back to your normal routine, but avoid heavy lifting and strenuous exercise for about a week.
• Medications: You’ll need to take medicines to prevent blood clots. This usually includes aspirin and another medicine like clopidogrel (Plavix) or ticagrelor (Brilinta). This is very important to keep your stent working.

Long-Term Recovery (Weeks to Months)

• Lifestyle Changes: To keep your heart healthy, follow a heart-healthy diet, exercise regularly, quit smoking if you smoke, and manage stress. Your doctor might recommend a cardiac rehab program, which includes supervised exercise and education about heart health.
• Follow-Up: Regular check-ups with your doctor will help monitor your recovery and adjust any medications if needed.
• Continuing Medications: Keep taking your prescribed medications to prevent complications.

Guidelines for Taking Blood Thinners (DAPT)

• Duration:
• If you had a drug-eluting stent (DES), take your blood thinners for at least 6 months.
• If you had a bare-metal stent (BMS), take them for at least 1 month.
• If you had a heart attack, take them for at least 12 months.
• Surgery:
• If you need surgery, it’s best to wait 6 months after getting a DES and 1 month after a BMS to lower the risk of problems.

Personal Recovery Time

Everyone’s recovery can be a bit different. It’s important to talk with your doctor about any concerns or questions and follow their advice closely for the best recovery.

For more details, you can refer to guidelines from the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC).

The general rule is one day to recover from an elective coronary stent, placed as an outpatient, for stable , chronic coronary disease. This assumes the procedure was performed without any complications, such as mechanical (coronary perforation, dissection ) related to stent deployment or downstream plaque dislodgment causing a peri-procedural myocardial infarction (heart attack). Normally outpatient PCI and stenting (percutaneous coronary interventional procedures with angioplasty balloons and stents) take an hour or less and the patient is stable for discharge home within 2 hours of radial artery access through the wrist. We keep them 4 hours if we access the femoral arteries in the groin. By the next day they are out and about. If complications develop they are kept in the hospital overnight to rule out extensive bleeding or MIs. Most would go home the next day. For very complicated PCIs, some patients are kept overnight as a precaution. With a severe tear in the artery resulting in life threatening, massive bleeding, then emergency coronary bypass grafting would have to be performed. This is quite rare (less than 1/2 to 1%) of outpatient elective procedures per year.these patients are more stable, generally healthier, and are coming from home to have the procedures done, for chronic, mostly stable disease. They either have stable,exertional, anginal chest pain, an abnormal stress test, or lastly, a staged intervention for a previously known blockage. By the next day, these patients are doing their usual activities. Those patients are different than the more critical patients admitted in the hospital for cardiac events (unstable angina or nonSTEMI). These patients present to the ER with signs and symptoms of a true heart attack or ACS ( acute coronary syndrome) . These patients have a ruptured atherosclerotic plaque that forms a clot inside the artery . This scenario becomes an urgent , if not emergent, medical situation. They are taken to the Cath lab that day or writhin 24 hours. There are protocols for each hospital with regards to the medications administered, the team called out from home, the nursing unit or ICU /CCU bed needed before and after the procedure. These patients generally stay in the hospital 1-2 days after the procedure, to ensure there are no post procedural complications such as arrhythmias, or extension of the MI, bleeding, etc. they have had a true cardiac event and will need 1-2 weeks to fully recover enough to go back to work and 4-6 weeks before strenuous activities can be resumed (once they are cleared by their cardiologist). Most of these do well, even when they push themselves to soon and regress for a few days. The recovery from the stent is still only a day or 2 but the recovery from the inciting event is days to weeks before they are 100%. The last case scenario is the true emergency, an STEMI. This type of heart attack is a true emergency and the artery is completely clotted off, with no blood flow to that part of the heart muscle. There will be extensive cardiac muscle loss and the complications from this range from electrical ( arrthymias , heart block) to mechanical ( perforations, aneurysms, valve rupture). These can cause cardiogenic shock or death within hours to days. When a patient comes to the ER with EMS, and their ECG shows an ST segment elevation) , we have one hour to get in and re-establish blood flow with clot removal (thrombectomy) angioplasty and stenting to the affected area. This is called the golden hour and it has been studied and proven clinically sacrosanct across many different studies and trials. This is a true medical emergency and if the muscle isnt saved the patients end up with cardiogenic shock and in-hospital mortality of 50%. They will never be the same if they do live. Time is muscle. Muscle death means patients death. The stent deployment and procedures are not much different , except that its done very fast. But the recovery is 1-2 days in the CCU and another 1-2 days in the step down unit. They are physically stressed and do little more than walk slowly in the hallways and to the bathroom. They will need 4-6 weeks at home before cleared to go to work. Many need 6 weeks of cardiac rehab. So the recovery from the stents might be a day or 2, but the recovery from this event in weeks to months .. of course it depends on the individual patient and the details of the hospital stay, procedure itself, any complications etc. some recover sooner than others. Most do recover if we are able to restore blood flow and oxygen to the tissue within the golden hour. (This is a very simplified explanation of these clinical scenarios and hours could be spent just explaining the different ST segment changes noted in the different kind of MIs). To close , the recovery frequency for most stents is a day or 2 and the recovery from open heart surgery or bypass surgery is 5-6 days in the hospital if all goes well. 2 weeks at home doing little but walking around the house .. after 6 weeks they can go to cardiac rehab and start walking regimen . Return to work is usually 4-6 weeks. In comparison, the return to work from an elective uncomplicated outpatient stent deployment is one day ..