People who get surgery to ease chest pain from a blocked heart artery pay $10,000 more for about the same level of relief they can get from taking a combination of pills, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
The finding comes from a large study that compared standard drug therapy with angioplasty to open up blockages in the heart.
"It costs about $10,000 more and you are not getting any more value," said Dr. William Weintraub of Christiana Care Health System in Newark, Delaware, whose research appears in the journal Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
"We don't have to reflexively do angioplasty on every blockage there is in an artery of the heart," Weintraub said in a telephone interview.
The surgery, known as PCI for percutaneous coronary intervention, involves threading a balloon-tipped catheter through the arteries and opening up the clog. A tiny wire-mesh coil called a stent is often inserted to prop open the artery.
More than 800,000 of these procedures are performed each year and they represent big business for medical device makers including Medtronic Inc, Boston Scientific Corp, Johnson & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories Inc.
But studies increasingly suggest that many patients can opt for a less invasive approach and still get relief from their chest pain, although it may take more time.
Initial results from the same study last year found balloon angioplasty to restore blood flow to clogged heart arteries plus drug therapy was no better than drugs alone at reducing deaths or heart attacks after 4.6 years, although some people who had the surgery did experience a better quality of life.
Weintraub's team reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that any immediate advantages that angioplasty or stent surgery offered over drugs went away after about three years.
More ...
