Twelve years ago, a big study found that angioplasty was no better than medicines for preventing heart attacks and deaths in non-emergency heart patients, but many doctors balked at the results and quarreled with the methods.That’s a different situation than a heart attack, when a procedure is needed right away to restore blood flow.“This study clearly goes against what has been the common wisdom for the last 30, 40 years” and may lead to less testing and invasive treatment for such patients in the future, said Dr.Big study casts doubt on need for many heart procedures. Some doctors still may quibble with the study, but it was very well done “and I think the results are extremely believable,” he said.
The results challenge medical dogma and call into question some of the most common practices in
Wholesale digital flow meter Manufacturers heart care.If stents and bypasses did not carry risks of their own, “I think the results would have shown an overall benefit” from them, said another study leader, Dr.Drugs also have improved a lot in recent years. We found an early harm and later benefit, and they canceled each other out.She was relieved when she was assigned to the medication treatment group. The procedure involves placing a tube into a major artery and using special dyes to image the heart’s blood vessels. Jay Giri, a cardiologist at the University of Pennsylvania with no role in the study.That’s either a bypass — open-heart surgery to detour around blockages — or angioplasty, in which doctors push a tube through an artery to the clog, inflate a tiny balloon and place a stent, or mesh scaffold, to prop the artery open.
For non-emergency cases, the study shows “there’s no need to rush” into invasive tests and procedures.All 5,179 participants had stress tests, usually done on a treadmill, that suggested blood flow was crimped. Averaged across the entire study period, the rates were similar regardless of treatment. The 66-year-old New York City woman said she joined the study six years ago after having trouble walking, which “scared me to death,” but so did the idea of a heart procedure. At four years, the trend reversed — 13 per cent of the procedures group and 15 per cent of the medicines group had suffered a problem.end-ofTags: heart disease, heart procedures, cardiovascular disease.Maryann Byrnes-Alvarado is not among them.“It’s intuitive that if you take the blockage away you’re going to do better, you’re going to feel better,” but the decision is up to the patient and doctor, she said.
