Heart surgery cost ‘warranted’

Press, 4 March 1978, Page 11

Heart surgery cost ‘warranted’

The cost of coronary artery surgery seemed well warranted and might be rapidly repaid, said the medical superintendent-in-chief for the North Canterbury Hospital Board (Dr L. McH. Berry). Doctor Berry was commenting on an article printed in the “New England Journal of Medicine” recently, which suggested that there were sound reasons for caution in allowing too rapid an expansion of open-heart units.

The writer of the article, Dr Eugene Braunwald, said that the success of the operation for coronary heart 'disease was not yet proven. The cost of setting up openheart units had developed into a rapidly growing “enterprise” in the United States, he said.

“If the principle espoused by many economists and political leaders is accepted — namely, that the total national resources for health care are more or less fixed — the enormous funds (about $1 billion a year in the United States) already being devoted to this pro-

cedure divert support available for other, perhaps more necessary, aspects of medical care,” Dr Braunwald wrote. Doctor Berry said, “There is no doubt that coronary artery disease is one of the prevalent diseases of the age, and if we are to treat everybody with it, it will be relatively expensive. On the other hand it could be a tremendous advance in the treatment for a very large number of people and the economics would require careful study.”

A recent article in the "New Zealand Medical Journal” by the Wellington heart surgeon, Mr Hedley Brown, suggested that the cost of coronary artery surgery was well Warranted and might be rapidly repaid, Dr Berry said.

“Perhaps this is the price of progress, but I am sure that if this surgery is proven, and I believe that it is likely to be, we would all like to think that should we become a victim of coronary artery disease, these facilities would not be denied us,” Dr Berry said.