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Study: Experience of doctor counts in angioplasty success
November 13, 1996
Web posted at: 9:50 p.m. ESTNEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- More than half of the cardiologists performing balloon angioplasty in the United States don't meet minimum standards, and patients' health often suffers, according to a new study.
Duke University Medical Center researchers presented their findings Wednesday at the annual American Heart Association meeting in New Orleans.
The less experience the heart surgeon has, the more likely the patient is to have to undergo more costly and painful procedures or risk dying, according to the researchers.
The American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology set standards in 1988 for doing a minimum amount of angioplasty procedures in order to achieve best results. The guidelines require doctors do at least 50 procedures per year.
Patients who had balloon angioplasty done by doctors who didn't meet the guidelines were more likely to need a repeat procedure or heart bypass surgery. Their chances of complications were also higher.
Results of the study showed 6 percent of patients whose doctors did fewer than 25 angioplasties per year needed subsequent bypass surgery or died in the hospital. When doctors did 25-50 angioplasties each year, bypass and death rates dropped to 5.6 percent; and for doctors who did more than 50, 4.7 percent needed bypass or died. The results show if more experienced doctors did the procedures, 1,129 patients would have avoided bypass surgery or death.
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