Commentary

Insufficient capacity for coronary artery bypass graftingsurgery (CABG) results in waiting time before surgery,in patients being assigned to different waiting times and in risk of death among the patients who are waiting. Angina symptoms, cardiac function and extent of coronary artery disease have traditionally been used to allocate pa-tients to groups with different waiting times.1 The impact of stenosis of the left main coronary artery on mortality and morbidity among patients waiting to undergo CABG is not clear, but in 2 large retrospective cohort studies the condition was not associated with increased waiting-time mortality.2,3 However, because patients with this condition are generally given a high clinical priority, it is unclear whether the lack of impact of waiting time found in previ-ous studies is caused by a true low risk or is the result of ad-equate prioritization. In a study published in this issue4 (see page 371), Légar