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IF YOU have a serious heart problem just when the top surgeons are away at a medical conference, take heart. Their absence could increase your chances of survival.

Harvard Medical School healthcare policy researcher Anupam Jena and colleagues examined tens of thousands of people who were admitted to hospital with a heart attack, heart failure or cardiac arrest between 2002 and 2011.

Among the most severe cases of cardiac arrest, 70 per cent of those admitted when no cardiology conference was taking place died within 30 days. But among those admitted when expert cardiologists were away at meetings, the corresponding death rate was 60 per cent (JAMA Internal Medicine, doi.org/xzw).


The results suggest that for the most seriously ill heart patients, the risks of emergency interventions such as artery widening may outweigh the benefits, Jena says. The findings should not lead to a change in doctors’ practice without further research, but should be seen more as a warning signal that very ill people sometimes receive too many interventions.

“All patients are not the same: the risk that they can tolerate is very different,” he says. “In some cases that might mean we have to treat patients more conservatively.”

This article appeared in print under the headline “Heart surgeons away? No sweat”