Tag Archives: patient surveys

Lessons Both patients and doctors can learn from this study. Patients need to be better informed about the natural history of coronary heart disease and what can be done to try to alter it – that is control not cure. Patients also need to understand the limitations of pharmaceutical agents and what revascularisation strategies can realistically achieve in the short and long term. In particular, over-optimistic pre-operative expectations1 need to be tempered with a dose of reality – the TV soaps and tabloid newspapers and magazines may be partly responsible – but more detailed explanation prior to intervention would not go amiss. Doctors