Overview
Women with chronic severe coronary artery disease face a major treatment decision when blood flow to the heart needs to be restored: percutaneous coronary intervention, or PCI, versus coronary artery bypass grafting, or CABG. PCI is the less invasive option, usually performed with a catheter and stent placement through an artery in the wrist or groin. CABG is open-heart surgery that creates new routes for blood to reach the heart muscle using graft vessels.
Although both approaches are widely used, most earlier studies have not focused specifically on women, even though women often have different symptom patterns, vessel size, comorbidity profiles, and procedural risks than men. This study used real-world data from Ontario, Canada, to compare long-term outcomes after PCI and CABG in women with chronic severe coronary artery disease.
