Coronary-Artery Bypass Grafting

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Abstract
To the Editor: Braunwald (Nov. 10 issue)1 generalizes from the similarity in the survival of patients randomly assigned to either medical or surgical therapy in the Coronary-Artery Surgery Study (CASS)2 to conclude that the annual mortality of all medically treated patients with three-vessel coronary-artery disease has declined from 11.4 to only 2.1 per cent. The conclusions of this randomized trial apply to a subset of only 780 patients — 6.5 percent of 11,921 patients with serious coronary disease at the participating sites who satisfied the criteria of the study.3 Patients with three-vessel disease made up only 2.2 per cent of . . .