ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 26, 1991                   TAG: 9103260198
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

STUDY: BYPASSES LOWER DEATH RATE

Scientists conducting a long-term study of coronary bypass surgery have turned up an unexpected finding. In the patients they studied, the surgery did not reduce the number of heart attacks, but overall did improve patients' chances of surviving them.

The researchers said their findings did not mean everyone with coronary disease should have bypass surgery. The operation is risky, they said, and the study did not compare surgery with more recent treatment advances.

And although patients who had surgery had slightly lower death rates, the difference might have been a result of chance.

The study, reported in the current issue of the American Heart Association's journal Circulation, involved 686 patients recruited by Veterans Administration researchers in the 1970s. - The New York Times 


 by CNB