Developments in Brief : Don’t Assume High Cholesterol Level Causes Heart Disease, DeBakey Warns

Famous heart surgeon Michael E. DeBakey has cautioned the public against assuming that the correlation between a high level of cholesterol and the risk of suffering a heart attack means the fatty substance is the cause of heart disease.

DeBakey said he was concerned that people might misinterpret the findings of a 15-year follow-up study of about 1,400 patients who had undergone surgery for blocked arteries at Baylor College of Medicine and Surgery in Houston.

The study, as yet unpublished, revealed that there was “absolutely no difference” in the survival of patients whose cholesterol levels were below a certain measure considered normal and those with higher levels.

But the finding does not mean that cholesterol is unimportant as a risk factor for heart disease, DeBakey said. It does mean that “we have not found the cause of heart disease,” he told a news conference last week at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he presented the results.

DeBakey said he considers an elevated cholesterol level to be one of the three chief risk factors for heart disease--the other two being use of tobacco and high blood pressure. He advises all of his patients to correct excessive levels of cholesterol by following a low-fat diet similar to the one advocated by the American Heart Assn.

Dr. Claude Lenfant, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, told the news conference, “It would be a terrible public health mistake to underplay the role of cholesterol in heart disease.”

DeBakey was in Los Angeles to receive the $25,000 Theodore E. Cummings Prize for outstanding contributions in cardiovascular disease.