a procedureCoronary artery bypass grafting

A length of vein from the leg or artery from the chest wall is sewn around a blocked coronary artery so blood reaches the muscle beyond it. Several grafts in one operation is usual. Eight nights in hospital on the Bangkok packages read for this record, seven for the minimally invasive version, and weeks before a long flight.

This is the operation that taught the world to argue about medical prices, and the argument rests on one pair of numbers from 2013.

Bloomberg reported that year that Narayana Health had brought coronary bypass surgery to 95,000 rupees, about 1,583 US dollars at the time, and set the same operation at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio at 106,385 dollars. Devi Shetty, who founded the group, said then that he meant to reach 800 dollars within a decade. The pair has been reprinted ever since, usually without its date and usually without the fact that the Indian figure is an Indian patient's bill at an Indian hospital rather than a package sold to somebody who flew in. It is carried here as what it is: two figures published in 2013, thirteen years before this record was written.

What a foreign patient can read off a page today is narrower and duller. Bangkok Heart Hospital, part of Bangkok Hospital, publishes its cardiovascular surgery packages with the nights inside them: off-pump or on-pump bypass at Level 1, 1,173,000 baht for eight nights; Level 2, 1,437,500 baht for the same eight; the minimally invasive version at 1,500,000 baht against a struck-through 1,725,000, for seven. Prices stated valid until 31 October 2026.

The exclusion list is where the money moves. The package covers theatre, the surgical and anaesthetic team, the critical care unit and the stated nights. It does not cover pre-assessment and medical clearance, other specialists' consultations, "special device used during procedure", extra nights in intensive care or on the ward, or medication taken home. A bypass that stays eight nights costs what the page says; one that needs a tenth night does not.

Inference — Level 1 and Level 2 are the page's own way of pricing the difficulty of the case without describing it. A reader cannot tell from the page which level their heart is.

General anaesthesia, the chest opened through the breastbone or, for the minimally invasive version, between the ribs, grafts taken from the leg, forearm or chest wall, the heart stopped and supported by a bypass machine or left beating, the grafts sewn on, the chest closed. Intensive care for a day or two, then the ward.

Where a state pays rather than a patient, the number looks nothing like a package. The Australian Medicare Benefits Schedule sets the surgeon's fee for item 38502 — coronary artery bypass including cardiopulmonary bypass — at $2,819.90, with a 75% benefit of $2,114.95. That is a fee for one doctor's service, not the admission: the hospital, the theatre, the intensive care and the anaesthetist are billed separately. Comparing it with a Bangkok package price compares a line with a bill.

As of 17 September 2026 the published Thai package prices for this operation run 1,173,000 to 1,500,000 baht with seven or eight nights inside them and the special device outside. The Indian figure the subject is famous for, 95,000 rupees, was published in 2013 against 106,385 US dollars at the Cleveland Clinic in the same report, and neither end has been restated in a source read here since.

This page describes an operation and the prices published for it. It is not medical advice. Narayana Health's own figure for this operation sits on that hospital's record rather than being repeated here; it appears on this page's chart all the same, because the chart gathers every price carrying this procedure's id.