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By the time a patient is seeing a cardiac surgeon, it's extraordinarily unlikely that it would be remotely responsible to advise a patient to try to treat their
by carbocation 15y ago
By the time a patient is seeing a cardiac surgeon, it's extraordinarily unlikely that it would be remotely responsible to advise a patient to try to treat their condition by using diet and exercise without medication.
- adammichaelc 15y agoI think that's mainly because of tradition and the difficulty involved in getting people to make a wholesale change in their diet, not because of the superiority of the medication in reversing the condition. See my other comment for sources: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3709426 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3709426
- carbocation 15y agoYour link shows a study comparing diet to placebo. In contrast, your comment talks about diet vs medication. A nuanced but important difference. To the best of my knowledge, diet-vs-medication has not been tested systematically in a high quality trial. Another study that you might like, and which is potentially more relevant by the point you're talking with a cardiac surgeon, is the Lyon Heart Study, which actually looks at secondary prevention: Easy to digest article: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/103/13/1823.full http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/103/13/1823.full Original study: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/99/6/779.full.pdf http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/99/6/779.full.pdf