This isn’t really true. Stents in patients with heart attacks have a clear mortality benefit except in certain high risk situations when bypass surgery has bett

This isn’t really true. Stents in patients with heart attacks have a clear mortality benefit except in certain high risk situations when bypass surgery has better outcomes. Stents are quite routine and much, much, much easier to do than bypass surgery. The problem is that outside of heart attacks, there isn’t good evidence for a mortality benefit from stents. So cardiologists are constantly searching for additional evidence that justifies stent use. And there isn’t much mortality benefit yet, but lots of other reasons why they might get used. But in those cases (like stable angina), almost no one would do bypass surgery, except for patients at very high risk of having a deadly heart attack. So criticize indication creep but there are many clear times when stents absolutely should be used.