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Drugs as good as stents for many heart patients

MILWAUKEE: People with chronic chest pain who are not in big danger of a heart attack now may have even less reason to rush into an artery-opening angioplasty: There is more evidence drugs should be tried first and often are just as effective.

The slim early advantage for angioplasty at relieving pain in these non-emergency cases starts to fade within six months and vanishes after three years, according to a new report from a landmark heart study.

That is sooner than the five years doctors estimated last year after their first analysis of the study. The new information comes from patients’ own reports of how they fared after treatment. The results are in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.

“This study should be enlightening and practice-changing for doctors and patients alike,” and should lead more to try drugs before resorting to the $40,000 heart procedure, said Duke University’s Dr. Eric Peterson, who co-authored an editorial in the medical journal.

The number of angioplasties has been falling since the first results from this big study came out in 2007, according to new figures from an American College of Cardiology database.

Angioplasty remains the top treatment for people having a heart attack or hospitalised with worsening symptoms. It involves using a tiny balloon to flatten a clog and propping the artery open with a mesh tube called a stent. — AP

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Drugs as good as stents for many heart patients

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