Yesterday’s edition of USA Today carried an article by Peter Eisler titled, “Six common surgeries often done unnecessarily” — and, you guessed it, angioplasty and stents were at the top of the list of “six common surgeries that carry significant risks of being done without medical necessity, according to federal data and independent studies.”
I was a bit taken aback because I was not aware of any new study, federal or independent, that concluded stents were being vastly over-used. And it turns out that there wasn’t one. Continue reading
Today the editors of the HEART Group Journals, comprising the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and other participating cardiovascular publications, issued a “
Is this stent necessary? Is this angioplasty inappropriate? Is this cardiologist uncertain if the procedure will help? Ever since the Appropriate Use Criteria for Coronary Revascularization were published, the three category labels of “appropriate,” “uncertain,” and “inappropriate” have confused the profession, press and population at large. The issue of definitions had still not been addressed in 
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