Bonner Has Six Bypass Operation

Yelena Bonner was in satisfactory condition today after major heart surgery, and a hospital spokesman said it was uncertain whether she would be alert enough to call her exiled husband in the Soviet Union.

Surgeons bypassed six arteries--three main arteries and three branches--which Martin Bander, spokesman at Massachusetts General Hospital, called “an unusual number.”

“The operation went very well and she is now doing well in intensive care,” he said.

The bypass operation took just over four hours and ended about 12:30 p.m., Bander said. He said Bonner would be at the hospital for eight to 10 days.

Her family said Bonner went into surgery concerned that for the last two weeks she has not heard from her husband, Andrei Sakharov.

“She worries that she does not have anything from Sakharov,” her son-in-law, Efrem Yankelevich, said.

Yankelevich said the family hoped a telephone call to Sakharov on Tuesday from Bonner’s private room at the hospital would alleviate her fears about her husband. But Bander said the call would depend on how quickly she came out of anesthesia.