Drug treatment may help as much as bypass

Treating first-time heart attack patients with aspirin and other drugs may be less costly and just as beneficial as performing invasive procedures such as heart bypass surgery.

Based on a seven-year study of nearly 160,000 Medicare patients, the report concluded that neither treatment style is allotted fairly and that treatment varies by region.

More than 280,000 patients covered by Medicare, the government healthcare program for older Americans, are admitted to hospitals each year after suffering a heart attack, and 18% die within 30 days, the study noted.

Treating patients with aspirin, blood pressure drugs and anti-clotting medications produced survival rates comparable to those of invasive procedures such as angioplasty or bypass surgery, if the care was managed carefully, the study said.

“While [heart attack] survival has improved compared with 30 years ago, invasive treatment and medical management are not optimal as practiced in the United States,” wrote study author Therese Stukel of Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, N.H.

The report was published in the March 16 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn.