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People with severe but stable heart disease from clogged arteries may have less chest pain if they get a procedure to improve blood flow rather than just giving medicines a chance to help, but it won’t cut their risk of having a heart attack or dying over the following few years, a big federally funded study found. The results challenge medical dogma and call into question some of the most common practices in heart care. They are the strongest evidence yet that tens of thousands of costly stent procedures and bypass operations each year are unnecessary or premature for people...

Early study of 231 patients details safety of using angioplasty to widen internal jugular and azygos veins; doctors hope results encourage more research to explore minimally invasive treatment options for those with multiple sclerosisCHICAGO, Ill. (March 28, 2011)—Understanding that angioplasty—a medical treatment used by interventional radiologists to widen the veins in the neck and chest to improve blood flow—is safe may encourage additional studies for its use as a treatment option for individuals with multiple sclerosis, say researchers at the Society of Interventional Radiology's 36th Annual Scientific Meeting in Chicago, Ill. "Angioplasty—the nonsurgical procedure of threading a thin tube into...

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 Just wanted to let you both (my oldest brother and I) know that (Sr.) Libby (Dahlstrom) is having heart surgery today. Went to get an angiogram yesterday and too much blockage to do a stint or the balloon thing, so surgery was recommended – probably 3 or 4 by- passes – she has blockage of 75% in one large artery and 95% in the other large artery and the others are smaller. (She has been having some symptoms since January….) Would call you, but I have to get back over to the hospital right now. Love,...

In an ideal world, every heart attack would end like Willard "Ziggy" Hill's. Within 90 minutes of arriving at a small community hospital in North Carolina, he was having a blocked artery reopened at Duke University Medical Center 25 miles away. "It was like being a car in a pit stop at NASCAR," he said. "I thought 'I am in really good hands.'" Two years ago, he might not have been. North Carolina was a bad place to have a heart attack, scoring below national norms of fast care. Now it may be one of the best. The reason is...

NEW DELHI: The world’s most common procedure for clearing blocked kidney arteries may actually end up severely damaging kidney function. For the first time ever, researchers from North Carolina’s Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Centre have shown that the debris of cholesterol and plaques, released during angioplasty and stenting of kidney arteries, get lodged in crucial blood vessels and impair kidney function. After analysing 28 angioplasty cases, researchers used a protection device to temporarily block the vessel at the site of the angioplasty and stenting. After the procedure, and while the protection system was still in place, researchers took a...

Keith Orr thought he would surprise his doctor when he came for a checkup. His doctor had told him to have a weight-loss operation to reduce the amount of food his stomach could hold, worried because Mr. Orr, at 6 feet 2 inches, weighed 278 pounds. He also had a blood sugar level so high he was on the verge of diabetes and a strong family history of early death from heart attacks. And Mr. Orr, who is 44, had already had a heart attack in 1998 when he was 35. But Mr. Orr had a secret plan. He had...

AP Medical Writer More than half a million people a year with chest pain are getting an unnecessary or premature procedure to unclog their arteries because drugs are just as effective, suggests a landmark study that challenges one of the most common practices in heart care. The stunning results found that angioplasty did not save lives or prevent heart attacks in non-emergency heart patients. An even bigger surprise: Angioplasty gave only slight and temporary relief from chest pain, the main reason it is done. "By five years, there was really no significant difference" in symptoms, said Dr. William Boden of...

HOUSTON - Congressman Nick Lampson, newly elected to the seat once held by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, underwent a procedure Friday to open up a partially blocked blood vessel, his spokeswoman said. Doctors at Christus St. John Hospital in suburban Houston performed the angioplasty on the 61-year-old Lampson and placed a stent in the vessel. Lampson was "conscious, alert and in good spirits throughout the procedure," spokeswoman Carrie Chess said in a statement. He was expected to be discharged Saturday. His wife, Susan Lampson, drove him to the hospital Thursday night because he started feeling sick during dinner....

The way in which doctors treat heart-attack patients may soon change because of the results of a new study. The findings of the study, released today at the American Heart Association meeting in Chicago, show that percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), a practice in which doctors mechanically open a clogged artery, does not reduce the chances of death or a second heart attack over the next four years if performed three days to 28 days after a heart attack. The randomized study involved 2,166 heart patients, and is published in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. [Snip]...

Experimental treatment makes 70-year-old a poster boy for science Mike Swendseid seemingly had run out of options in battling heart disease. The Grand Forks man had angioplasty. He underwent quadruple-bypass heart surgery. Inside him were four wires, two stents, a pacemaker and a defibrillator. "After the last stent, doctors told me there was nothing more they could do for Mike," said his wife, Marion. But, as science progressed, there was something. In January, the 70-year-old Swendseid became a recipient of experimental stem cell treatment at the Minneapolis Heart Institute, which is part of Abbott Northwestern Hospital. The treatment uses Swendseid's...