"The Stent Blog is a must-read resource"   -- ConcurringOpinions.com

What is
'The Voice
in the Ear'?


Who's Burt?

Archives

« send comment »

RSS Feed

June 8, 2007 -- 7:14PM EDT

Consumer Retorts
The magazine that tells you the best dishwasher to buy, which toaster gives you that nice overall even brown crispness, or which SUV is most likely to roll-over on a sharp turn, has now entered the cath lab. The Editors (and the experts they have consulted) are recommending against getting angioplasty, except in certain very specific cases, like a few hours after a heart attack (my recommendation: don't wait -- get that angioplasty now! WHILE you're having the heart attack!!).

CR also thinks that multislice CT angiography is "seldom worthwhile"; their number one recommendation: "In general, don't bother with CT angiography." You might think that this recommendation might slightly upset the 3,400 members of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT) -- and it did. The CR piece was published online last week, but had been published in print back in March -- and the SCCT leadership wrote a strongly worded critique, taking Consumer Reports to task for maligning this new and valuable test. For example, CR mistook a CT angiogram for a Calcium Scoring test.

Well this new online version corrected that one error, but left in a slew of others. You can read all about it in today's feature on Angioplasty.Org.

« comment »        « back to top »