Word: bypassers
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...cardiac bypass was first developed as a regular procedure in 1967, when only 37 operations were performed. Since then some 300,000 to 400,000 have been carried out in the U.S. alone, and the 1978 total is expected to top 75,000. The operation involves taking lengths of vein from a patient's leg and stitching them to the aorta and to coronary arteries so that blockages are bypassed. The surgery demands the most skillful surgical teamwork, commonly takes as long as five hours and can cost $12,000 or more...
Some critics of bypass surgery have noted that it is already a $ 1 billion a year industry and that its ballooning costs threaten the future of other health care in the U.S. Joseph Califano, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, told a Senate subcommittee that if a preliminary Veterans Administration report proves accurate, "hundreds of millions of dollars could be saved through less frequent use of this expensive surgery...
...angina (viselike chest pain) whose conditions had remained stable for six months before their participation in the study. Patients with the most severe forms of coronary-artery disease or other disorders were deliberately excluded. Of the 596 VA patients studied, 310 were treated with medication alone, while 286 had bypass operations. The study's conclusions: medically treated patients had a three-year survival rate of 87%; those who underwent surgery only 88%. That minuscule difference caused distress among many heart disease victims. Those contemplating bypasses agonized over whether to go ahead, while others who had already had the operation...
...patients were the most unsuitable group to study because their mortality under medical therapy alone was already less than 1 %." In agreement was Dr. Donald B. Effler, head of cardiovascular surgery at the Cleveland Clinic when his chief associate, Dr. René Favaloro, developed the bypass. Said Effler: "I think the VA report has already been shot down, and if not, then it will be before sunset." Favaloro, recalled from his home base in Argentina to deliver one of the session's two principal lectures, made an impassioned, hour-long argument for bypass surgery on properly selected patients. Commented...
...fact, the VA study did have limitations. It failed to emphasize that among the patients given only medication, 17% eventually had to have bypass surgery to relieve angina. In a similar federal study, fully a third of the patients initially treated only with drugs chose surgery within 2½ years. The VA study's report of a 5.6% mortality rate also came under attack; several centers had already cut that rate to 3% during the study's 1972-74 period, and in some it is now down to less than...