Drugs as Good as Angioplasty for Stable Heart Disease

By Steven ReinbergHealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, March 26 (HealthDay News) -- Aggressive drug therapy appears to be just as good as angioplasty for patients with stable heart disease, a new study finds.
"This is really good news for patients," said study lead author Dr. William E. Boden, a professor of medicine and public health at the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. "We have more treatment options for patients than we thought we did."
There has been a belief that patients with chronic stable heart disease need to have either an angioplasty or heart bypass surgery, Boden said. "There has been an unproven assumption that patients must proceed to some type of revascularization procedure," he said.
Patients with stable heart disease make up about three-quarters of all the patients who undergo angioplasty and receive stents in the United States, Boden noted. Angioplasty is a medical procedure that uses a balloon to open narrowed or clogged blood vessels of the heart. Usually, during the procedure a stent -- a wire mesh tube -- is placed in the vessel to keep it open.
"What the Clinical Outcomes Utilizing Revascularization and Aggressive Drug Evaluation (COURAGE) trial tells us is that optimal medical [drug] therapy, when combined with lifestyle changes, appears to be the equal of angioplasty and optimal medical therapy combined," Boden said.
The study results were presented Monday at the American College of Cardiology's annual meeting, in New Orleans, and will also be published in the April 12 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.