Medicate First!!

The American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiologists both state that this condition should be treated with medication FIRST. Why go to the big guns from the get go? I responded very well to meds and my blockages were very very severe (85-100%). And most cardo-thoracic surgeons and invasive cardiologists totally ignore the fact that in people in their 50s, revascularization through angiogenesis picks up the slack left by the coronary vessels that have been compromised. In fact, a CABG usually damages most of the revascularization the body has instituted to heal itself. Why do they do that? Well there's one simple answer, CABGs are much more lucrative than treating this disease with medications.

I have come to believe that if a cardiac physician tells you that you need surgery immediately and you are a walking time bomb waiting to explode or the longer you delay the worse its going to get, you should run, not walk to the nearest board certified noninterventionalist cardiologist and obtain a second opinion. I had been scared into believing the 100% blockages in two of my coronary arteries and 85-90% blockages in the third and other major vessels around my heart meant I would have a heart attack and die at any minute if I didn't have the surgery. Yet, I was told my heart was in good shape. Now what kind of idiot did that interventionalist cardiologist and his cardio-thoracic surgeon buddy think I was? The pipes supplying oxygen to my heart are clogged yet my heart's in good shape? That does not make any sense at all. They didn't tell me about revascularization as the reason my heart was in great shape. Why? because if they did, they knew I would seek another opinion and quite possibly find out my angina was due to hypertension undert physical exertion and they would not get to perform their very expensive lifesaving surgery. As it was, that's exactly what happened. But not because these doctors were ethical and saw that I the patient was fully informed. Oh no, I had to have surgery postponed because the surgeon was not in network with my insurance. Had he been, I would have been one more unnessecary coronary bypass performed in 2004.