A study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute will likely reduce the 1 million angioplasties performed in the United States each year, reports The Washington Post. The study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine and presented at an American Heart Association meeting, determined that having an angioplasty more than three days after a heart attack provided no more benefit to stable patients than drug therapy. The finding was surprising to cardiologists who have long thought that closed arteries should always be opened. The study results have already changed the practice of Mandeep Mehra, head of cardiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. When Mehra recently saw a 76-year-old man three days after a heart attack, he treated him with medical therapy, even though “traditionally we would have felt compelled” to order an angiogram and probably an angioplasty, he said.
