Angioplasty OK for Major Heart Artery Clogs
Angioplasty OK for Major Heart Artery Clogs
Study Shows Angioplasty May Offer Option to Open Blockages in Heart Artery That Supplies Most of Heart's Blood
April 1, 2008 (Chicago) -- Angioplasty may be a perfectly good option for opening up blockages in the major artery that provides most of the blood to the heart, South Korean researchers say.
They studied people with blockages in the left main coronary artery. It supplies blood to the left side of the heart muscle, which is the side that pumps fresh blood to the rest of the body. Current guidelines call for these patients to undergo bypass surgery.
Video: CholesterolGuidelines
Video: Young Peopleand Heart Disease
Video: PredictingHeart Disease
All Heart-RelatedVideos
Related to heart health
coronary artery disease, angina, atherosclerosis, clogged arteries, cardiovascular disease, chest pain, heart attack, heart disease, myocardial infarction, bypass surgery, angiogram, angioplasty, anger and heart disease , aspirin therapy, stents, EKG
© 2008 WebMD, LLC. All rightsreserved.
"We focused on all-cause mortality and found no statistical difference between [angioplasty] and bypass surgery," says Seung-Jung Park, MD, director of interventional cardiology at Asan Medical Center in Seoul.
But angioplasty patients who received stents -- tiny wire mesh tubes used to prop open an artery -- were more likely than bypass patients to have to undergo procedures to reopen arteries that had reclogged, he says.
Still, the hope is that some patients with seriously blocked arteries may be able to avoid the more invasive bypass surgery, Park tells WebMD.
In angioplasty, a balloon at the end of a long tube is threaded through an artery in the groin. The doctor shimmies the probe up through the patient's leg and right into the arteries of the heart. The balloon is inflated at the spot where the vessel has narrowed, opening it.
To keep the vessel open, doctors often add a stent to the end of the balloon catheter. Some stents are coated with drugs to further reduce the risk an artery will reclog.
In bypass surgery, cardiac surgeons harvest a segment of a healthy blood vessel from another part of the body and use it to bypass the clogged artery or arteries, rerouting the blood to improve blood flow to the heart.
For the new study, Park and colleagues analyzed data on 2,240 patients with left main coronary artery disease treated at 12 medical centers in Korea. Of these, 318 were treated with angioplasty and bare-metal stents, 784 were treated with angioplasty and drug-coated stents, and 1,138 underwent bypass surgery.
The findings were released at a meeting of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions being held in conjunction with the American College of Cardiology. They were simultaneously published online in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Angioplasty OK for Major Heart Artery
Study Shows Angioplasty May Offer Option to Open Blockages in Heart Artery That Supplies Most of Heart's Blood
April 1, 2008 (Chicago) -- Angioplasty may be a perfectly good option for opening up blockages in the major artery that provides most of the blood to the heart, South Korean researchers say.
They studied people with blockages in the left main coronary artery. It supplies blood to the left side of the heart muscle, which is the side that pumps fresh blood to the rest of the body. Current guidelines call for these patients to undergo bypass surgery.
Heart Health Videos
Video: CholesterolGuidelines
Video: Young Peopleand Heart Disease
Video: PredictingHeart Disease
All Heart-RelatedVideos
Related Slideshows
Related to heart health
coronary artery disease, angina, atherosclerosis, clogged arteries, cardiovascular disease, chest pain, heart attack, heart disease, myocardial infarction, bypass surgery, angiogram, angioplasty, anger and heart disease , aspirin therapy, stents, EKG
© 2008 WebMD, LLC. All rightsreserved.
"We focused on all-cause mortality and found no statistical difference between [angioplasty] and bypass surgery," says Seung-Jung Park, MD, director of interventional cardiology at Asan Medical Center in Seoul.
But angioplasty patients who received stents -- tiny wire mesh tubes used to prop open an artery -- were more likely than bypass patients to have to undergo procedures to reopen arteries that had reclogged, he says.
Still, the hope is that some patients with seriously blocked arteries may be able to avoid the more invasive bypass surgery, Park tells WebMD.
Angioplasty vs. Bypass
In angioplasty, a balloon at the end of a long tube is threaded through an artery in the groin. The doctor shimmies the probe up through the patient's leg and right into the arteries of the heart. The balloon is inflated at the spot where the vessel has narrowed, opening it.
To keep the vessel open, doctors often add a stent to the end of the balloon catheter. Some stents are coated with drugs to further reduce the risk an artery will reclog.
In bypass surgery, cardiac surgeons harvest a segment of a healthy blood vessel from another part of the body and use it to bypass the clogged artery or arteries, rerouting the blood to improve blood flow to the heart.
For the new study, Park and colleagues analyzed data on 2,240 patients with left main coronary artery disease treated at 12 medical centers in Korea. Of these, 318 were treated with angioplasty and bare-metal stents, 784 were treated with angioplasty and drug-coated stents, and 1,138 underwent bypass surgery.
The findings were released at a meeting of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions being held in conjunction with the American College of Cardiology. They were simultaneously published online in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Source...