The Nature of Treatment Selection in Coronary Artery Disease

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Abstract
This report presents our experience with the medical and surgical management of patients with coronary heart disease and uses this experience to document the role of a computerized medical information system in the long-term management of patients with a chronic disease. Of 781 consecutively evaluated patients, 402 were treated medically and 379 were treated with aortocoronary bypass surgery. At two years post-zero time, more than twice as many surgical survivors were pain free, but the survival was the same in the medical (83%) and surgical (85%) cohorts. The medically and surgically treated patients were compared with respect to 89 baseline characteristics. The cohorts were remarkably similar. Correction for baseline inequalities did not affect the fact that two-year survival was the same in both cohorts. One subgroup was identified in which surgically treated patients had a higher two-year survival. Other subgroups were identified in which therapy did not appear to affect two-year survival.

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