Are Unneeded Stents a Growing Problem?

Are unneeded stents a growing problem?  Recently officials at Excela Health in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania announced that over 140 patients received unnecessary stent procedures performed by two interventional cardiologists with staff privileges at Westmoreland Regional Hospital. According to hospital representatives, Drs Ehab Morcos and George Bousamra performed coronary stent procedures on patients in 2010 that "may not have been medically necessary".  Excela  representatives have hired two seperate teams of independent, interventional cardiologists to conduct formal reviews of cardiac coronary stent procedures performed at Westmoreland Hospital's cardiac catheterization laboratory.  While patients who received unneeded stents in 2010 have been notified, cases of patients receiving stents in 2009 are still under review.

 

Jefferson Regional Medical Center outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania recently announced that it, likewise, is conducting an internal investigation of its catheterization laboratory.  This results from this investigation have yet to be released.

 

The performance of unneeded stent procedures is neither new nor limited to the Pittsburgh area.

 

In 2010, it was revealed that Dr Mark Midei, a cardiologist with staff priviliges at St Joseph's Hospital in Towson, Maryland, performed almost 600 unnecessary stent procedures between 2007 and 2010. 

 

In 2006, it was discovered that cardiologist Mehmood Patel was performing vast amounts of these unnecessary heart procedures at Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center in Layfayette, Louisiana. 

 

In 2002, it was revealed that two california cardiologists were likewise performing stent procedures that were not required.  Drs Chae Hyun Moon and Fidel Realyvasquez performed an extraordinary amount of unnecessary procedures at Shasta Regional Medical Center in Redding, California.  Before their practice was made public, the hospital pampered them with chairmanships and perks.

 

These incidents beg the question: are these unnecessary heart procedures simply isolated examples of  "doctors gone bad", or are they the tip of a yet to be discovered iceberg?  This question is especially troublesome given the likelihood that the hospitals involved had to have known.