Are doctors exposing heart patients to unnecessary cardiac procedures?

Dozens of cardiologists in communities outside major metro areas are performing catheterization procedures – such as diagnostic angiograms and artery-clearing angioplasties – at higher rates than doctors working at big city hospitals that serve as major cardiac referral centers. News data say it raises a critical question: How many of these catheterization procedures are medically advisable and how many put patients at unnecessary risk and add billions of dollars to the nation’s medical bill? David Jones, A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine, is quoted.

Read the full article