What is better: Coronary artery bypass surgery OR Angioplasty with stent? Another article (SYNTAX Study), another viewpoint!!

For heart patients with clogged arteries, the choice between bypass surgery or an angioplasty may come down to one question: How many procedures would you like to have?
In research presented Monday at the European Society of Cardiology meeting in Munich, experts concluded that while bypass surgery and angioplasty offer comparable results, patients who have angioplasties are twice as likely to require another procedure within a year.

Also note:

After one year, researchers found that the death rate among the two groups was virtually the same: 7.7 percent among surgery patients and 7.6 percent among angioplasty patients.

In patients who had an angioplasty, nearly 14 percent needed another procedure after a year, compared with about 6 percent of surgery patients.

But patients who had surgery had about a 2 percent stroke risk versus nearly zero risk for patients who had an angioplasty. Doctors said that any surgery had an inherent stroke risk, compared with an angioplasty.

The study was also underpowered to provide definite results.

Reference: European Society of Cardiology, Associated Press

More conundrums on whether cardiac catheterization is safe for unstable angina (”near heart attack”) or non-ST elevation myocardial infarction (”small heart attacks”).

Heart disease is the number one killer of women each year in the United States. Cardiac catheterization is a routine procedure that allows doctors to find potential blockages in coronary arteries in order to help prevent new heart attacks and even death. A recent study finds that high risk women, who do have a heart attack, benefit from this procedure just as much as men. But for some women the procedure may not always be the best option.

Reference: JAMA