Their study focused on the insertion of stents, also called stents, tiny metal cages that serve to unblock clogged arteries. The devices are life-saving when used to open arteries in patients with heart attacks. But, they are sometimes used on other types of patients, for whom they do not really have any use.
The study of researchers at Imperial College London:
The new study, published in "The Lancet," has stunned leading cardiologists by going against decades of clinical experience. The results raise questions about whether stents should be used so often, or not at all, to treat chest pain.
For the study, Dr. Justin E. Davies, a cardiologist at Imperial College London, and his colleagues used 200 patients with a deeply blocked coronary artery and severe chest pain to impede physical activity. common reasons for stent insertion.
All were treated for six weeks with drugs to reduce the risk of heart attack, such as aspirin, a statin and a medicine against hypertension, as well as medications that relieve chest pain by slowing the heart or leading to blood vessels.
Subsequently, the subjects were subjected to the actual insertion process or false stent. This is one of the few studies in cardiology in which some patients have been subjected to a fictitious procedure, and the results of which were then compared to patients receiving the actual treatment.
Here's what scientists found by comparing the results:
In both groups, physicians donned a catheter through the patient's groin or wrist and, with X-ray guidance, to their obstructed artery.
Once the catheter reached blockage, the doctor inserted a stent. But if the patient was subjected to a fictitious procedure, the doctor simply removed the catheter without placing the stent.
Neither the patients nor the researchers evaluating them afterwards knew who had received an endoprosthesis and who had not received it. After the procedure, both groups of patients took powerful drugs to prevent blood clots.
When the researchers tested the patients six weeks later, both groups said they had less chest pain, and they did better with the test than before the study began.
But, the researchers found that there was no real difference between patients. Those who had the simulacrum procedure did as well as those who received stents.
Cardiologists have said that one of the reasons could be that atherosclerosis affects many blood vessels, and placing a stent into a single artery may not make much difference in a patient's discomfort.