Drug Therapy More Cost-Effective Than Angioplasty For Diabetic Patients With Heart Disease

Many patients with diabetes should forego angioplasties for heart disease and just take medicine instead, according to a new National Institutes of Health study led by Stanford University School of Medicine researcher Mark Hlatky, MD.

Previous research had shown that patients with type-2 diabetes and mild-to-moderate heart disease have no reduction in risk for heart attacks, strokes or death if they have an angioplasty compared with simply taking the right medications. The new study shows that there’s substantial cost savings in sticking with drug treatment, with an average savings of $11,000 per patient over four years.

“For patients with relatively mild symptoms of heart disease, angioplasty is clearly more expensive and it’s clearly not more beneficial,” said Hlatky, professor of health research and policy and of cardiovascular medicine, presented the new findings Nov. 17 in Orlando at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association. The report will be published online that same day in the journal Circulation.

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