"The widow was judged to be too old and ill to survive open heart surgery, but doctors said she was fit enough for a keyhole operation to fit a tailor-made stent."
What good does a stent do for an aortic aneurysm? Further, the article states,
"It admitted it had funded the procedure - a fenestrated endovascular aortic aneurysm repair - for patients in Coventry before. The operation involves making a small incision near the groin and travelling up the artery to fit a stent at the point of the aneurysm.'
This is the surgery that actually attempts to repair the aneurysm. Do all the doctors agree this is too risky? Are the doctors proposing an ineffective surgery to make some money?
There are more types of stents than just cardiac stents.
Stents designed to treat abdominal aortic aneurysms are over an inch in diameter and consist of a wire mesh covered with fabric. Like cardiac stents, these are compressed into a narrow tube, the tube is inserted through a femoral artery, and positioned using x-rays before being allowed to expand into place.
Needless to say, the process is more complicated than my simple description.