How to Treat Heart Disease

Surely the study is noteworthy. It addresses an issue I know nothing about, so I will simply report the findings. The issue is the use of stents and bypass surgery to treat heart disease. While the study does not dispute the fact that patients who are suffering acute symptoms do well to receive surgical treatment, other patients do as well in the long run by taking medication and by improving their health habits.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the study.

Stents and coronary artery bypass surgery are no more effective than intensive drug treatment and better health habits in preventing millions of Americans from heart attacks and death, a large study found, shedding new light on a major controversy in cardiology.

Researchers and doctors have fiercely debated for years how best to treat people who have narrowed coronary arteries but aren’t suffering acute symptoms.

The standard treatment has been to implant stents—wire mesh tubes that open up clogged arteries—or to perform bypass surgery, redirecting blood around a blockage. Those procedures are performed even though these patients either have no symptoms or feel chest pain only when they climb a few flights of stairs or exert themselves in some other way.

The study is the largest and among the most rigorous research yet to suggest that while stents and bypass surgery can be lifesaving for people who are having heart attacks, they aren’t necessarily better than cholesterol-lowering drugs and other changes in health habits for most people with chronic, or stable, coronary artery disease, which affects about 9.4 million Americans.

“You won’t prolong life,” said Judith Hochman, chair of the study and senior associate dean for clinical sciences at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine.

But stents or bypass surgery work better than medicine and lifestyle changes alone in relieving symptoms for people who have frequent angina, or chest pain, the researchers found.