How long is too long to wait for heart bypass surgery?

When it comes to treating heart disease, it is unclear whether waiting for surgery is a better choice than having a less invasive procedure done immediately.

“In non-emergency situations, modern medicine offers two alternative strategies for treating multiple arteries: bypass surgery and stenting,” says Dr. Boris Sobolev, health services researcher at the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation (C2E2). “In the past, more than one-third of patients needing non-emergency bypass surgery had to wait longer than deemed safe by a doctor.”

Read more on VCHRI.ca.