Questions continue to mount about when it’s appropriate to use catheters and stents to clear blockages of heart arteries. More and more data show the approach isn’t better than drugs alone in prolonging life and preventing heart attacks.
CBS News and BusinessWeek teamed up to present the latest thinking on angioplasty, a procedure performed more than 1.2 million times a year in the U.S.
CBS Medical Correspondent Jon LaPook examines potential overuse of the procedure, which is lucrative for doctors and hospitals, in a piece produced by Heather Won Tesoriero, AHCJ’s 1000th member.
A worrisome angle: some hospitals do angioplasties without on-site cardiac surgery teams around in case of emergencies. Dartmouth’s Elliot Fisher tells LaPook, “Hospitals are competing to establish services which duplicate services right next door. Not to the benefit of the population, but to try to preserve their financial margins.”
Over at BusinessWeek, John Carey writes that the “growing evidence that angioplasty brings few benefits has yet to make a dent in the number of procedures performed.” If Carey’s name rings a bell, it might be because he took first place in AHCJ’s award category for small magazines this year for a BusinessWeek cover story questioning the value of statins in preventing heart disease. He looks at a study of diabetes patients that we wrote about here.
(Photo by Bleiglass via Wikipedia Commons)
