Heart Bypass

brozio

Hi,

I was wondering if anybody knew where I could find any statistics on the number of heart bypass procedures that take place in Ireland every year? Can't find any recent stats on the net
Thanks.

Traumadoc

Probably because they are not doing many now.
I heard Cardiothorasic SPRs in the UK have been told there is no jobs for them now.

drzhivago

brozio wrote: »

Hi,

I was wondering if anybody knew where I could find any statistics on the number of heart bypass procedures that take place in Ireland every year? Can't find any recent stats on the net
Thanks.

Department of health website produce document every year think its called vital statistics

Other option is HIPE department of hospitals that have cardiac surgeons, Mater, James, Galway, Cork I think and some of the privates too

charlieroot

By bypass do you mean CABG (coronary artery bypass graft?). If so how come there aren't many of them being done anymore - the syntax[1] trial recently showed them to be better then PCI in a number of cases?

[1]Serruys, Patrick W., Morice, Marie-Claude, Kappetein, A. Pieter, Colombo, Antonio, Holmes, David R., Mack, Michael J., Stahle, Elisabeth, Feldman, Ted E., van den Brand, Marcel, Bass, Eric J., Van Dyck, Nic, Leadley, Katrin, Dawkins, Keith D., Mohr, Friedrich W., the SYNTAX Investigators,
Percutaneous Coronary Intervention versus Coronary-Artery Bypass Grafting for Severe Coronary Artery Disease
N Engl J Med 2009 360: 961-972

SomeDose

I think the general consensus in the literature is that CABG has more favourable outcomes compared to PCI, although the cardiologists might argue that PCI is a relatively new technique and better outcomes will be seen as more evidence becomes available over the years. CABG is certainly the more effective treatment at present, but that needs to be balanced by the increased risk of post-op morbidity, MI, stroke etc. So I think CABG is now reserved for patients who have either failed medical therapy, are unsuitable for PCI or previously failed PCI. I guess the conclusions can also be muddied somewhat by discrepancies in post-op/PCI medication. In that Syntax trial, for example, ~70% of patients received clopidogrel at 12 months post-intervention but don't know about the other 30%. Similarly, we don't know details of the CABG group such as how long they got high-dose aspirin for, if standard IHD meds were prescribed (statins, ACEIs, Beta-blockers) etc.

Probably because they are not doing many now.
I heard Cardiothorasic SPRs in the UK have been told there is no jobs for them now.

Would that be regardless of region? I would've thought the high rates of coronary heart disease in, for example, northern regions would keep them busy irrespective of the increasing popularity of PCI. Plus, there's a limited number of specialist high-volume cath labs to carry out PCIs. Where I work is a tertiary cardiology centre which up until recently had a target of about 1000 CABGs per year (between 6/7 consultants). That hasn't been met in the last couple of years, presumably because of the growing popularity of PCI, but it's also due to simple logistics such as lack of post-surgery ITU/HDU beds. Surprisingly, the number of CABGs performed actually increased by about 5% from 2006 to 2007, although I don't know if this trend continued in 2008.