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| so quickly reimbursed by insurance companies that it's the economic engine that keeps many hospitals and physicians in business. |
| Typically, a middle-aged man or woman is told, "You're a walking time bomb. Unless we operate immediately, you're going to die." |
| Is that true? According to Julian Whitaker, M.D., the answer is almost always no. His advice: Never agree to immediate surgery. Instead, get a second opinion and, before doing that, consider the evidence. |
| In 1977, results of an ambitious Veterans Administration Cooperative Study that tested bypass surgery were published. The scientifically controlled trial of 596 patients, all with the same degree of blocked arteries, concluded that surgery was no better than conventional medications at preventing heart attacks or saving lives. The patients were randomly assigned to receive either medical therapy or bypass surgery, and the death rate in both groups was identical. |
| The study was not well-received by surgeons, who demanded a new trial. The government then spent $100 million dollars on the Coronary Artery Surgical Study, or CASS. This time 780 patients with severely blocked arteries were divided into two groups, one of which received surgery, the other conventional medical therapy. The results, published in 1983, showed that for the average patient, the risk of dying from bypass surgery is three to five times greater than the risk of dying from heart disease. In an editorial accompanying the CASS study, Eugene Braunwald, M.D., then chief of cardiology at Harvard Medical School, predicted that the use of bypass surgery would decrease because of its proven ineffectiveness. |
| Obviously, that didn't happen. Why are so many |
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