Veterans Administration Coronary Cooperative Study

doi:10.1001/jama.1979.03290520015016

Veterans Administration Coronary Cooperative Study

Cooperating vs Noncooperating Hospitals

Joseph S. Carey, MD

University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine
From the Section of Thoracic Surgery, Wadsworth Veterans Administration Hospital, and Department of Surgery, University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center.

Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.

Excerpt

THE DEBATE on the merits of coronary artery bypass continues on in editorial pages, most recently in JAMA¹ and in the American Journal of Cardiology.² The debate was initiated by Eugene Braunwald, MD, in September 1977, when he suggested that "coronary arteriography is not always resisted vigorously" by practicing physicians caring for patients with angina pectoris. Braunwald³ also said that a more insidious problem is that an industry has been built around the coronary artery bypass procedure. Dr Braunwald's comment was based on a preliminary report of a Veterans Administration Cooperative Study, which suggested that in male veterans with chronic stable angina, coronary artery bypass surgery did not prolong survival. This report has now been disputed by its own participants⁴ and by several nonparticipating hospitals.^5-7 Wadsworth VA (Los Angeles) and San Francisco VA hospitals, both of which dropped out of the cooperative study in 1972,