by Curt Pesmen
The third of 5 operations you don’t want to get—and what to do instead.
Every year in the United States, surgeons perform 1.2 million angioplasties, during which a cardiologist uses tiny balloons and implanted wire cages (stents) to unclog arteries. This Roto-Rooter-type approach is less invasive and has a shorter recovery period than bypass, which is open-heart surgery. The problem: A groundbreaking study of more than 2,000 heart patients, just released this year at a cardiology conference and in The New England Journal of Medicine, indicated that a completely nonsurgical method—heart medication—was just as beneficial as angioplasty and stents in keeping arteries open in many patients. The bottom line: Angioplasty did not appear to prevent heart attacks or save lives among nonemergency heart subjects in the study.
