open-heart surgery

1. 1.

   heart surgery in which the rib cage is spread open, the heart is stopped and blood is detoured through a heart-lung machine while a heart valve or coronary artery is surgically repaired

   Broaderheart surgery

   Narrowercoronary bypass

Questions about open-heart surgery

What does open-heart surgery mean?

open-heart surgery means "heart surgery in which the rib cage is spread open, the heart is stopped and blood is detoured through a heart-lung machine while a heart valve or coronary artery is surgically repaired".

Is open-heart surgery a common word?

open-heart surgery is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.