Editorial Should Percutaneous Coronary Intervention and Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery be Considered Effective Methods to Control Myocardial Ischemia in Stable Angina?

In the last fifteen years several randomized studies were publi-shed comparing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and co-ronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) in patients with stable angina and multivessel coronary artery disease1-3. Few studies, however, have focused their designs on the presence of angina (BARI3, MASS II)4 or on the quantitative eva-luation of myocardial ischemia as obtained at ergometric stress test or at myocardial perfusion scintillography1,4. Studies that compared CABG and PCI showed that mortality and q-wave myocardial infarction rates were similar either at short term (one year) or at long term (five years) follow-up for both groups. The freedom of angina advantage at one year within the CABG group was lost in the fifth year after randomization5-7. Alazráki et al8 also showed the same results using Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) evaluation wit