Tobacco, overly rich food, overweight, hypertension, and heredity: these are the factors that can provoke the thickening of the walls of arteries and veins. When it does so to those that irrigate the heart, the heart-attack threatens.

A food hygienist familiar with the famous Cretan régime can avoid getting there. On the menu: at least two vegetables and fruits a day; good fats (olive oil,  walnut oil, the fatty fishes), and lean meats (chicken, roast beef, ham) and not more than three glasses of wine per day. If the pain is declared, there are three solutions: medicine, the investment of a small balloon in the artery to permit the circulation of blood, or the heart bypass surgery.

Even though the operation is the most prevalent in cardiac surgery - it is done 22,000 times per year in France - it remains a delicate act. It involves diverting the blood circulation while implanting a healthy piece of artery above a diseased artery or vein. It requires one month to recover and resume a normal life. The Pr Dreyfus, chief of the cardio surgery at the Hospital Foch in Suresnes, who operated on Depardieu, appeared realistic: "One cannot force the patient to change. One operates on them so that they recover a better quality of life, not so that they become monks."   
-- MR.-P.G. 

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