U.S. heart patients don't get needed tests, studies find

"U.S. doctors are implanting too many artery-opening heart stents, risking more deaths, heart attacks and other complications, because they're not performing tests that could gauge patients' risks, two studies found. Doctors could cut their use of heart stents, which are tiny metal tubes used to prop open clogged vessels, by one-third if they used a technique that better measures the severity of a blockage, according to data released at a Washington, D.C. medical conference. In another study, researchers writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association found more than half the patients with stable heart disease aren't getting a recommended exercise stress test before doctors clear their coronary artery" - Bloomberg