The best magazine
Now a large clinical trial suggests that drug-coated stents, springy lattice tubes used to prop open clogged arteries, may also work well in patients with multiple blockages. And in some patients, the stents produce equally good results with faster recovery times.
The caveats, experts say, are that people with daily or weekly chest pain from advanced coronary artery disease will probably experience slightly better relief from bypass surgery compared to stenting; but they can also count on waiting to get the full benefit of that procedure weeks to months longer than people who get stents.
Experts say the study, which is published in The New England Journal of Medicine, brings to light important trade-offs that people with complex coronary artery disease need to weigh before making a decision between the two procedures.
“I think the message here, therefore, is not a simple one -- that there’s a clear winner -- but that patients will need to choose based on their own priorities and values,” says study researcher David J. Cohen, MD, a cardiologist at St. Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo.
Independent experts agree.
“If you take the 50,000-mile view, it looks like these procedures got about the same results,” says A. Marc Gillinov, MD, cardiac surgeon at the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart & Vascular Institute at Cleveland Clinic, in Ohio. “But if you really dig down and look at the clinical circumstances going in, you’ll see there are important differences. So the real value in this study is that it can help patients and doctors make informed decisions on an individual basis.”
A Visual Guide to Heart Disease
Source: ...