Stroke surgery ‘worthless’
NZPA-Reuter Boston An international team of doctors says that a popular form of surgery designed to prevent strokes is worthless and may cause more strokes than no surgery at all. The study, reported in the “New England Journal of Medicine,” cost more than $15.58 million, involved 1377 patients in 15 countries, and took eight years to complete. It was designed to test the assumption that surgeons can reduce the risk of stroke by by-passing blood around neck and head arteries that have been clogged by heart disease. But the study said that the surgery increases the risk of a fatal or non-fatal stroke 14 per cent. The results, according to
Dr Fred Plum, of the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Centre, mean doctors are going to have a hard time justifying the operation, known as extracranialintracranial arterial bypass, or ec-ic bypass surgery. Dr Plum said that the results should also prompt medical insurance companies to stop paying for it, adding that ‘lt is high time that Government and third party underwriters heeded the results of this kind of analysis and removed useless procedures from the list” of operations they will pay for. If that were done, the savings could be substantial. According to Dr Plum, the total cost of such an operation is about $25,800 in the United States.
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Press, 12 November 1985, Page 20
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221Stroke surgery ‘worthless’ Press, 12 November 1985, Page 20
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