Angioplasty Beats Drugs for Treating Heart Attacks

A study has found that heart attack patients fare better when treated with angioplasty rather than with clot-busting drugs. The findings were reported in the April 17, 2002, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The study involved 451 heart attack patients admitted to 11 US hospitals and randomly assigned to receive angioplasty or clot-busting drugs. Also, 70% of the angioplasty patients received a stent. Hospitals lacking cardiac surgery capability, required in many US hospitals that perform angioplasty, were given temporary waivers for the study. The results six months later showed that the combined incidence of death, repeat heart attacks, and stroke was 40% lower for the angioplasty patients (12%) than for those who took clot-busting drugs (20%).

For the study, investigators from Johns Hopkins Medical School (Baltimore, MD, USA), created a program to develop angioplasty at each of the hospitals involved. This involved setting standards, training staff, developing logistics, and creating ways to manage quality and errors.

"Given the superiority of primary angioplasty over thrombolytic therapy, it is important that health-care policy be amended to provide the greatest number of patients access to this better form of therapy,” said Dr. Thomas Aversano, lead author and associate professor of medicine at Hopkins. "It should not be a matter of chance or geography that determines what kind of care a heart attack patient receives.”




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