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Wednesday, April 21, 2004Doing heart bypass surgery while the heart is still beating is just as effective as traditional surgery, but costs significantly less, according to new research. ...Dr. Bhatnagar was not involved in the new research, but was not surprised by the results. He said that at Trillium, where 80 per cent of bypass procedures are done while the patient's heart is still beating, each surgery saves about $2,000 over the traditional method, largely because there are fewer complications. ....The biggest knock against beating-heart surgery is that it is technically more difficult for the surgeon and the anesthetist. There were also concerns about its long-term effectiveness, but those have largely been laid to rest by this study. The study does show equal or better outcomes for those patients who had beating heart surgery compared to those whose hearts were stopped. But there's one major drawback to the study and it's the reason that concerns about the procedure are not put to rest - it only looked at the outcomes of the procedure in one hospital and one surgeon. The success of procedures like this depends on the skill of the surgeon. Only if the procedure shows better or equal outcomes at several different hospitals with several different surgical teams can it be said with any certainty that the procedure is better. posted by Sydney on 4/21/2004 08:10:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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