KANSAS CITY, Mo., July 6 (UPI) -- Of the approximately 600,000 angioplasties performed yearly in the United States, about 12 percent are inappropriate, researchers say.
Drs. Paul Chan and John Spertus of St. Luke's Mid-America Heart and Vascular Institute in Kansas City, Mo., and colleagues say appropriate use criteria for procedures such as angioplasty have been developed by national organizations, led by the American College of Cardiology.
For the purposes of this study, an appropriate angioplasty suggests definitive or probable benefit to patients in terms of increased survival or symptom relief. An uncertain angioplasty suggests the procedure may be beneficial to patients, but there is insufficient evidence to conclude there is definitive benefit, the researchers say.
An inappropriate angioplasty suggests the procedure is unlikely to make patients live longer or feel better and may even be harmful, the researchers explain.
"Using appropriate use criteria developed by national cardiology organizations, we found that, overall, cardiologists are performing angioplasties for appropriate reasons 85 percent of the time and 4 percent of the time it was unlikely to be beneficial," Chan said in a statement.
"When we separated emergency from elective angioplasties, however, the picture is a bit different. When an angioplasty was performed during a heart attack, it was appropriate 98.5 percent of the time," Chan said in a statement.
"When an angioplasty was performed in an elective, non-emergency setting, 50 percent of angioplasties were considered appropriate using these criteria while 38 percent were uncertain -- meaning that more research is needed to know if they are beneficial or not -- in appropriateness and 12 percent were inappropriate."
The findings are published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
