Heart Angiograms Show No Disease in Almost 40% (Update1)
Doctors may be sending patients too quickly for elective angiograms to detect heart disease, exposing them to radiation and driving up U.S. health-care costs, a study suggests.
An analysis of records of about 400,000 patients concluded that 37.6 percent who underwent angiography to find obstructed heart arteries showed evidence of significant blockage, according to research published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. A total of 39.2 percent displayed none. Most of the patients had been sent for angiograms after initial screening suggested blood vessels might be blocked.
The amount of disease discovered was lower than the researchers expected and indicates that doctors need better diagnostic tools before deciding to proceed with catheterization for angiograms, said Manesh Patel, a cardiologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and one of the authors of the study.
“We need to improve all the things we do before we get to the cath lab,”
Supplements Patel said in a telephone interview. “But we need more large-scale studies to give doctors the guidance they require to make these calls.”
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the American Heart Association in Dallas. Artery blockages that can cause heart attacks tend to develop more frequently in men than women, in older people, and in those who smoke, are overweight or suffer from diabetes or high cholesterol, according to the association’s Web site.
Cost, Radiation
The study authors said use of medical imaging tests, including angiograms,
Supplementshas pushed up medical costs. They cited a federal study of Medicare that showed spending on imaging services doubled to $14 billion in 2006 from six years earlier.
