Hi,
Yes, surgery is more complicated with MG, but not necessarily a problem. Because MG can cause breathing problems, and because we take medicines that affect our immune system, surgeons and anesthesiologists prepare differently.

If you have your surgery at a large medical center, the folks there will be aware of all of the precautions to take. If you go to a smaller place -- maybe not. My own preference is to always go to the largest and most experienced clinic/hospital in my area -- in my case, Mayo Clinic, Rochester MN (I worked there most of my life). The places that have a full backup of other doctors just in case. The specialty heart clinics are just that -- they specialize in heart surgeries and don't always have the full complement of support people if something goes wrong. So aim for experience!!!

There have been some good comments on this in previous posts on this forum -- you can find them with a site search
(you type in exactly this line in your browser --
anesthesia myasthenia site:www.dailystrength.org which will give you the search below.

https://www.google.com/search?q=anesthesia+site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailystrength.org%2Fgroup%2Fmyasthenia-gravis&oq=anesthesia+site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailystrength.org%2Fgroup%2Fmyasthenia-gravis&gs_l=psy-ab.3...8257.11572.0.11894.11.11.0.0.0.0.108.919.8j2.10.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..1.0.0.64ppaain3cM

Good Luck
Russ

Hello Russ thanks again for the good info about MG and surgery and you really help us a lot. This disease is so snowflake it seems hard to know what will happen as it progresses however I have read that with treatment the severity should max in about one year for two thirds of us.

My MG started hard, got worse, and then in about 5 months with high prednisone doses and mestinon, got much better and then I went into tapering the prednisone down to get to the lowest effective dose and was thinking about switching to Imuran long term as prednisone, although great to get MG under control, is not so good long term.
In my case, I tapered to no prednisone about a year after I got MG, and found I was in remission and have remained so for 4 years now. One of 15% of folks who go into remission for varying periods of time. I got MG at 65 and now am 70 and hopeful my remission will continue the rest of my life.

Good Luck with the surgery. Nowadays there are fewer bypass surgeries and more stents placed. When I worked at Mayo Clinic there were many research studies going on about the stents and eventually they came to replace most of the bypass surgeries except for fully blocked arteries or other problems. A friend of mine went in and had a valve replaced by just going up through the artery -- no chest opening at all last year. Amazing progress nowadays on heart surgery.

Russ