Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 11, 1993 TAG: 9311110040
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Short
Together, angioplasty and bypass surgery are performed on more than 550,000 Americans each year. The study released Wednesday is the largest head-to-head comparison.
The $8.5 million federally funded study was conducted on 392 men and women who had blockages in two or more of the arteries that feed their hearts. These buildups are the main cause of chest pain and heart attacks.
Angioplasty uses balloons threaded into the heart with a catheter to squeeze open narrowed arteries. Bypass requires open-heart surgery so surgeons can detour blood around the blockages with pieces of artery taken from elsewhere in the body.
While angioplasty is much less grueling and, at least initially, less expensive, it is now used almost exclusively on people with a single blocked artery. Bypass is reserved largely for more complicated cases involving several blocked arteries.
"The impetus was to find out whether angioplasty is a viable alternative to bypass for multivessel disease," said Dr. Spencer B. King III of Emory University, who directed the study.
After three years of follow-up, he concluded that it is a reasonable choice. Overall, three-quarters of the patients in both treatment groups were doing well. They had not suffered heart attacks or showed signs of seriously reduced blood flow to their hearts. - Associated Press
by CNB