Drug Medical Information

BYPASS SURGERY -MEDICAL MARVEL OR MEDICAL MALPRACTICE? THE PROGRESSION OF DISEASE

An article in Internal Medicine News points out that for many patients, symptom relief is distressingly short-term. "Thirty to fifty percent of those who undergo surgery have a recurrence of symptoms within the first year. Even those patients who remain asymptomatic after one year, report a return of angina at a three to five percent rate in subsequent years. Usually the new symptoms are due to a progression of the underlying disease." The analysis does not surprise, Robert J. Hall, clinical professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, who has commented: "Bypass surgery is not curing the disease. It is "modifying it with a piece of pipe." Not only is the disease not cured, it almost inevitably returns - only quicker than before. One bypass procedure almost inevitably leads to the need for another, as Dr. Norman Ratlif at the Cleveland Clinic has reported. While coronary artery blockage normally takes about forty years, the grafts implanted during bypass surgery suffer accelerated plaque build-up and usually block again within five to ten years. What does bypass do best? It bypasses the real problem. It's a patchwork solution to a degenerative disease that effects the entire arterial system, not just one or two replaceable main vessels.

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