LINCOLN, Neb. -- Nebraska football coach Tom Osborne underwent four hours of heart surgery Tuesday to bypass a partially blocked coronary artery and came out in 'excellent shape.'
'He is stable and doing very well,' said Dr. Walt Weaver, Osborne's personal physician.
'He is in excellent shape and has a very strong heart muscle.'
Osborne, 47, is a dedicated jogger. He is known among his peers and fans as a soft-spoken man with an ascetic lifestyle.
Doctors said Osborne's strong heart made the operation easier. They said he will be encouraged to resume running and should be back to his routine in four to six weeks -- in time for spring football.
Dr. Deepak Gangahar, who operated on Osborne, said two areas of the left anterior descending coronary artery -- one of three artery systems that supplies blood to the heart -- were 90 to 95 percent blocked.
The procedure performed on Osborne is used in only about 10 percent of bypass operations, doctors said. Normally, a leg vein is used to channel blood around an obstructed coronary artery. But in this instance mammary arteries were preferable.
'We use this whenever possible in younger patients,' Weaver said.
Osborne said Monday that over the last six or eight weeks he experienced a fullness or tightness in his chest when running.
'There was no real pain at all,' he said. 'If I hadn't been a runner, the doctor said I could have had a heart attack and keeled over. The joggingenabled me to detect the problem sooner.'
Weaver said the operation was not an emergency procedure, but Osborne decided Monday he wanted it done as soon as possible. Surgery was recommended over two other options -- taking medicine and slowing down; or undergoing angioplasty, in which a tiny balloon compresses the obstructions.
