Success of bypass surgery questioned.Success of bypass surgery Bypass surgery A surgical procedure that grafts blood vessels onto arteries to reroute the blood flow around blockages in the arteries (arteriosclerosis). questioned Although coronary bypass surgery Coronary bypass surgery A surgical procedure which places a shunt to allow blood to travel from the aorta to a branch of the coronary artery at a point past an obstruction. Mentioned in: Cardiac Catheterization, Thallium Heart Scan is beneficial in the short term, its advantage to heart patients gradually decreases, according to new statistics from the European Coronary Surgery Study Group. Seven years ago, the same group reported that during the first five years after surgery, bypass patients had a significantly higher survival rate than those who received only medical treatments determined by their physicians. But after continuing to follow survivors among the 767 men (all of whom were under age 65 when the study began, and none of whom initially had severe symptoms), the researchers found the percentage of surgical patients who survived decreased in the seven years following their first report. During these seven years, the researchers report in the Aug. 11 NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE The New England Journal of Medicine (New Engl J Med or NEJM) is an English-language peer-reviewed medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It is one of the most popular and widely-read peer-reviewed general medical journals in the world. , "the patients originally assigned to surgical treatment who survived to five years fared worse than those [who survived to five years] in the medically treated group, and the benefit of early surgical treatment gradually decreased." Overall, the scientists say, there is still a slightly higher rate of survival among patients treated with surgery. The European study is one of three large, randomized ran·dom·ize tr.v. ran·dom·ized, ran·dom·iz·ing, ran·dom·iz·es To make random in arrangement, especially in order to control the variables in an experiment. studies comparing the usefulness of two treatments for chest pain, or angina, when the need for surgery is unclear. In 1984, the Veterans Administration Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery Coronary artery bypass surgery, also coronary artery bypass graft surgery, and colloquially heart bypass or bypass surgery is a surgical procedure performed to relieve angina and reduce the risk of death from coronary artery disease. Cooperative Study Group reached similar conclusions from an 11-year study. And in 1983, researchers conducting the Coronary Artery coronary artery n. 1. An artery with origin in the right aortic sinus; with distribution to the right side of the heart in the coronary sulcus, and with branches to the right atrium and ventricle, including the atrioventricular branches and Surgery Study found little difference between medical and surgical treatment after following some patients for as long as seven years (SN: 11/5/83, p. 294). Although the European researchers do not offer an explanation for the findings, some physicians suggest that using a vein in the leg, once the most common procedure for coronary bypass coronary bypass Surgical treatment for coronary heart disease to relieve angina pectoris and prevent heart attacks. It became widely used in the 1960s. One or more blood vessels—usually an artery in the chest or a vein from the leg—are transplanted to create , does not provide long-term benefit. "There's quite a bit of evidence that disease develops in the grafts and they don't stay open," says Katherine Detre of the Veterans Administration Medical Center in West Haven, Conn., who coordinted the 1984 study. Detre says researchers are now finding the internal mammary artery a more successful bypass. |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion