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August 19, 2009 -- 5:45pm PDT FALSE: Stents Denied to Patients Over 59
Totally wrong! This lie has been circulated worldwide in an anonymous email and somehow has found its way into articles, such as the one mentioned, op-ed pieces, etc. and is clearly part of an organized campaign to scare elderly citizens into opposing health care reform. I am not going to get into the pros and cons of the overall plan here, but I do feel the need to publicize true facts over false rumors regarding stents and angioplasty.. The British National Health Service does not deny stents to patients over 59. This is an absurd claim, since it is specifically patients over 59 who are the prime beneficiaries of angioplasty, stents and interventional procedures. My sources are Dr. Peter Weissberg, medical director of the British Heart Foundation, as quoted in The Guardian, which states about the claim:
Also responding to this assertion was British Health Secretary Andy Burnham, who stated in an email to Dr. Hisham Rana's medical blog:
Stents and heart bypass surgery are fully available in the England, as they are and would continue to be in the U.S. It's possible that somehow, somewhere, someone picked up on a possible two-year-old hypothetical recommendation by the British National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) that drug-eluting stents might not be cost-effective. (We covered that topic in detail here -- and that recommendation was never adopted!) However, if you really want to discuss denial of health services, go to our Forum Topic titled, Financial Assistance for Plavix. Here you will read many stories from patients in the U.S. who received drug-eluting stents (most of them were insured for the procedure) but who were then denied reimbursement by their insurance companies for the recommended one-year-to-life prescription drug therapy of clopidogrel (Plavix) -- which is almost $1,500 annually. Many have stopped taking the drug because they cannot afford it. It is well-documented that premature cessation of antiplatelet therapy results in increased heart attacks and mortality. This is the true current status quo and to paraphrase the ophthamologist, "this situation in its present form might be lethal for you." |
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A
false meme has been circulating that the British National Health Service
(NHS) denies stents to patients older than 59...and that
Obama's health care reform will follow the NHS guidelines. I first
read this ridiculous assertion in a