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When I had a heart attack two years ago, I was taken immediately from the E.R. to the O.R. for emergency treatment, including cardiac catheterization and a stainless steel stent implanted in my left anterior descending coronary artery that turned out to be 99% blocked.
But, overwhelmed and terrified, I knew nothing of what was about to happen to me that morning, even though I do have a vague memory of the cardiologist explaining something to me before I was taken upstairs. I don’t think I was even capable of comprehension at the time. What I learned much later was that my tiny stent may help a newly-opened blocked artery to stay open.
But a new study now suggests heart patients believe that cardiac stents have far greater benefits than they actually do.
This research, published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, found that over 80% of the 153 heart patients studied who had undergone angioplasty with stents implanted thought that the procedure would cut their odds of having a future heart attack.
But about the same proportion of the 27 cardiologists surveyed (who had either referred these patients for angioplasty or performed the procedure) reported to researchers that they had told their patients that stents would do nothing more than simply relieve chest pain.
This difference has been called a “yawning disconnect between what doctors say and what patients hear”. The disconnect extends to other types of elective medical treatment as well, resulting in patient confusion and even overuse of some procedures.
Cancer patients, for example, often believe that chemotherapy will destroy a tumour, counting on a cure that medical evidence does not promise at all.
Read the rest of this article at HEART SISTERS.
