50 Percent Of Stents May Do No Good

Each year in the United States, about 173,000 patients have angioplasties to reopen clogged arteries and insert a stent. Most patients believe that the $12,000 operation will extend their lives. Now comes a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association claiming that stents do not extend life or prevent future heart attacks any better than medications such as baby aspirin or cholesterol-lowering statins. The Boston Globe reports on the research, which suggests that found that 12 percent of elective stent procedures performed in heart disease patients were clearly inappropriate and that an additional 38 percent were of “uncertain’’ benefit. The Globe reports that a significant percentage of stable heart disease patients who receive stents – tiny mesh cylinders inserted in arteries to prop them open – do enjoy more short-term relief from the chest pain and breathlessness caused by angina than those who rely on medications alone. The problem is, they expect more than short term benefits, and they don't always get them. Why? One reason, the Globe reports, is that stents cause their own problems: scar tissue formed around bare metal stents, and blood clots occurred in stents that release medications intended to prevent scar tissue from forming. The Globe cites research conducted at Cornell that found that more than half of heart disease patients who elected to have stents didn’t first try the full range of medications, as the cardiology guidelines recommend.

Read more in the Boston Globe.