In 2012, Dr. David L. Brown, a professor in the cardiovascular division of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis had coauthored a paper that examined every randomized clinical trial that compared stent implantation with more conservative forms of treatment, and he found that stents for stable patients prevent zero heart attacks and extend the lives of patients a grand total of not at all. In general, Brown says, “nobody that’s not having a heart attack needs a stent.” (Brown added that stents may improve chest pain in some patients, albeit fleetingly.) Nonetheless, hundreds of thousands of stable patients receive stents annually, and one in 50 will suffer a serious complication or die as a result of the implantation procedure.

Thanks to such guidelines, the frequency of clearly inappropriate stent placement declined significantly between 2010 and 2014. Still, the latest assessment in more than 1,600 hospitals across the country concluded that about half of all stent placements in stable patients were either definitely or possibly inappropriate.

Read the full article here:

• When Evidence Says No, but Doctors Say Yes

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