A lawyer took on India’s profiteering hospitals to end the obscene overpricing of cardiac stents

In a country where 30 million people suffer from cardiovascular problems and over two million die of heart attacks and strokes each year, stents have become essential. Every year, over 200,000 heart surgeries take place in the country. But this demand has stoked a racket of extraordinary proportions: Government data published last month showed that hospitals in Asia’s third-largest economy could be selling stents at margins of up to 654%. Not any more, though.

 Heart Stents Are Useless for Most Stable Patients. They’re Still Widely Used.

Why are so many people agreeing to an expensive procedure — and putting themselves at risk — for a placebo effect?

A Cardiac Conundrum

In his new book, Broken Hearts: The Tangled History of Cardiac Care (Johns Hopkins), David S. Jones ’92, M.D. ’97, Ph.D. ’01, Ackerman professor of the culture of medicine, narrates the history of two of American medicine’s highest-profile treatments for heart disease: coronary artery bypass grafts and angioplasty.

Drug-eluting stents: Do they increase heart attack risk?

Find out the differences between drug-eluting stents and bare-metal stents, what you should ask your doctor before having a stent placed, and what you should do after you get a drug-eluting stent.

Heart bypass surgery or stents? Depends on patient

The average person with multiple diseased arteries in the heart does slightly better following coronary artery bypass surgery than after having stents inserted, a new study suggests, but the optimal procedure varies by patient. Researchers found slightly more heart patients survived at least five years after bypass surgery - 74 percent, versus 72 percent of those who had a stenting procedure, known as angioplasty. However, people who had no diabetes or heart failure and were non-smokers tended to have better outcomes with angioplasty than with more invasive surgery, the study team reported Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Heart Procedures: Stents Uncovered

Not all heart blockages lead to heart attacks. Learn why stents are overused and not always inserted for the right reasons. The 4 questions you need to ask your doctor.

Heart Stents Still Overused, Experts Say

But far too often, studies show, stents continue to be implanted in patients who stand to gain little if any benefit.

Putting Stents to the Test

But while stents unquestionably save lives of patients in the throes of a heart attack or a threatened heart attack, there is no convincing evidence that stents reduce heart attack risk for people suffering from the chest pains known as stable angina.

Recent study shows treatment works to reduce the need for cardiac stents and bypass surgeries

The long-awaited study that looked at an inexpensive, non-invasive way to treat the No. 1 killer in America, heart disease, has been completed and it proved that the treatment works.

Should More Heart Patients Get Stents? Study Says Yes

The latest salvo in the battle over stents -- the tiny mesh sleeves designed to keep clogged coronary arteries open -- came in the form of a study suggesting that the devices are better for some patients than medicines alone.

Stents to treat blocked heart arteries are not an easy fix

What DrRich implies with his sage advice is that just because a blockage exists; that we see it visually, does not mean that it needs to be squished open with a metal scaffolding.

The Power of the Placebo

A recent study revealed that stents are likely ineffective at relieving chest pain. Why didn’t we know that?

Thousands of heart patients get stents that may do more harm than good

Stents are commonly used for stable chest pain — but the devices may not be helping.

Vice More than Virtue? Long Term Implications of the Coronary Stent

In conclusion, we advocate the use of DCBs in all emergency and routine angioplasty where viable with the use of DES when required as a bail-out technique only. This is based on a lack of evidence to suggest coronary stents have any implication on mortality, an ongoing problem (despite advances in technology) with ISR and target lesion revascularisation and promising local data within our trust.

What it's like: How it feels to get a heart stent

A stent will support the inner wall of your heart's blocked artery, while the angioplasty procedure helps restore blood flow through the artery or arteries that were blocked.

When Evidence Says No, but Doctors Say Yes

Long after research contradicts common medical practices, patients continue to demand them and physicians continue to deliver. The result is an epidemic of unnecessary and unhelpful treatments.

‘Unbelievable’: Heart Stents Fail to Ease Chest Pain

The new study, published in the Lancet, stunned leading cardiologists by countering decades of clinical experience. The findings raise questions about whether stents should be used so often — or at all — to treat chest pain.