Is heart surgery necessary?
A recent study has indicated that when a blocked artery is causing chest pain, treatment with drugs works as well as surgery to insert a stent. Read the AP release here. Then see if you can find additional links about:
- Stents
- The New England Journal of Medicine
- Dr. William Boden
- Bypass Surgery
- Dr. Martin B. Leon
- Clinical research funded by drug companies
2 comments:
Andrew 3840
I can definitly relate to this article. My friend's dad had a bypass surgery a few years ago and he is still having chest problems. If he took the drugs they talk about in this article, he wouldn't have had to pay so much and worry his family. I believe that surgery is always risky and should be a last resort. I can't believe how heart doctors in the article felt like they were being "shot" at. I think that it is a real testiment to how far science has come along, that a pill can do as much as a major sugery.I feel that the heart surgeons only care about their pockets and not their patients help. This article is a great step in winging people off the idea that they constantly need to be operated on. The statistics from the article make medication use a more desirable treatment then surgery. Both had the same success rate.I couldn't believe that there were 1.2 million surgeries done a year for the heart. This article does a good job in persuading people to take pills for heart problems first.
I had never seen a bypass surgery, so I watched one. After watching, I was shocked that a pill could the same without the surgery. It's real graphic. http://sln.fi.edu/biosci/healthy/openheart.html.
Stephen 2068
I find this article to be very informative and interesting due to the fact that my father in fact has many heart problems, and had an angioplasty a few years back, but now is taking drugs for his chest pains. I'm sure if he would have known that his surgery wasn't really necessary, and that he would've ended up having to take drugs anyways, he wouldn't have ever got his pointless surgery to begin with. Nobody told him that drugs had the potential of fixing his problem, he only heard about the angioplasty. I also never knew that this surgery cost $40,000. That is way to much, and when i tell him about what i learned i'm sure he's going to be pretty bitter. The good thing however is that now at least he knows that drugs are a better solution. I found another website relating to cardiac surgery at
http://www.mayoclinic.org/cardiac-surgery/
Post a Comment