If you’re among the hundreds of thousands of Americans with clogged kidney arteries, you might want to consider trying medicines before rushing into angioplasty to open them up. The pricey procedure is no more effective and carries surprisingly big risks, a study found.
The National Kidney Foundation estimates more than 250,000 Americans have narrowing of the arteries that supply blood to the kidneys.
Doctors at several British hospitals and universities compared patients with severe kidney artery blockages who were treated just with medicines — to lower cholesterol, control blood pressure and prevent blood clots — with a group that got the same drugs and underwent angioplasty, in which a catheter is threaded through an artery to clear out blockages. The angioplasty group fared no better — and some of those patients suffered serious complications, including deaths and amputations.
The study was published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine.
