February 19, 1999 – People who need coronary artery bypass surgery, angioplasty or radical surgery for cancer should choose surgeons and hospitals that often perform these types of operations. Dr James Hollis, a lecturer at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, highlighted this fact at an American Heart Association conference.
Dr Hollis pointed out that patients were more likely to die or need emergency bypass surgery at the time of angioplasty if they were treated by less busy surgeons working in low-capacity hospitals. In the United States, more than half of the doctors who do angioplasties fail to treat enough patients to become truly competent. Obviously, complications and unnecessary deaths ensue.
In 1988, a directive was issued to doctors not to do angioplasties if they did less than 50 per year, while for hospitals the minimum number required was 200. A little later a survey revealed that 6.1% of patients of physicians performing less than 25 angioplasties per year required bypass surgery or died in hospital. This percentage was 4.7% among surgeons who did more than 50 per year.
Another recent study indicates that radical surgery for pancreatic cancer is twice as risky if done in a small hospital with few patients. This is important because patients often make the decision to have operations in a small hospital not too far from their home rather than in a larger hospital further away.
Dr. Kenneth Walker, medical columnist in a major Montreal daily, recommends that all patients who have to undergo major surgeries to preferably choose university hospitals where a high volume of operations are performed and where it is strictly controlled who wields the scalpel. . It’s not an absolute guarantee, he stresses, but all things considered, there is less risk in having the operation by experienced people and in hospitals accustomed to complex procedures.
HealthPassport.net
According to Press, February 7, 1999
