Dr. Paul Chan sat down with me recently to talk about the study published this week in JAMA that he served as lead author on. The article, “Appropriateness of Percutaneous Coronary Intervention.” has generated hundreds of news reports about “unnecessary stenting”, “overuse of angioplasty”, etc.
In my exclusive interview with Dr. Chan, we talked about the real meaning of this study, what it was meant to do (benchmark the use of PCI in the U.S.) and how it’s being (mis) interpreted by the press (I’ll be discussing this aspect in a subsequent post).
Dr. Chan also discusses the field of cardiology, its self-reflection, shown in studies like this one, and also some ways in which clinical cardiologists, referring physicians and…patients(!)…need to be brought into the decision-making process. Also, a fact which I haven’t seen discussed much in the press: the NCDR is sending member hospitals quarterly reports of inappropriate procedures, mapped to the Appropriate Use Criteria, so they can look at their rates and improve upon them in very specific ways.
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