Drug Medical Information

'BYPASS' ON THE DECLINE?

There are signs the bypass procedure is on the wane at long last. The American public is becoming more sophisticated, more learned, more inclined to think for themselves, less disposed to be 'bypassed' merely because "the doctor says so." People are catching on to the profits and politics of the heart disease industry. Articles such as appeared in Business Week hailing Dr. Denton Cooley's new supermarket assembly-ling approach to bypass surgery - he's doing six to eight surgeries a day at cut-rate prices to recover from personal bankruptcy -have turned the naive into cynics. In addition, there's been so much unfavorable publicity about bypass surgery - the darling of the American cardiology business for more than two decades - that even the most trusting individuals suspect that much of the surgery that's prescribed is designed to benefit the surgeon's end-of-the-year balance sheet. The suspicious are right on target. As the $3 million, five year Rand Corporation study showed, coronary bypass surgery, carotid endarterectomy (the removal of blockages from one or both arteries carrying blood to the brain), and angiography (the pre-surgical x-ray technique to detect blocked arteries) are "significantly overused procedures".

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