The researchers analyzed data from the COURAGE trial and concluded that angioplasty may add $10,000 to treatment costs “without significant gain in life years or quality-adjusted life years.”

Some of the patients received balloon angioplasty (percutaneous coronary intervention — PCI) plus optimal medical therapy, while others received optimal medical therapy alone. The study found that 4.6 years after treatment, there was no difference in the two groups’ rates of death or heart attack, but patients who received PCI did have an improved quality of life.

The researchers used Framingham study survival data to estimate patients’ life expectancy beyond the COURAGE trial. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) was expressed as cost per life-year and cost per quality-adjusted life-year gained.

Patient ICERs ranged from $168,000 to $300,000 per life-year of quality-adjusted life-year gained with PCI, said the researchers, who noted that there’s a reasonable probability that medical therapy alone offers better outcome at a lower cost. They found that the costs per patient for significant improvement in angina chest pain frequency, physical limitation and quality of life were $154,580, $112,876 and $124,233, respectively.

“The COURAGE trial did not find adding PCI to optimal medical therapy to be a cost-effective initial management strategy for symptomatic, chronic coronary artery disease,” the researchers concluded.

Angioplasty Not Cost-Effective for Chronic Coronary Disease – Yahoo! News

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Researchers have been trying to understand more of the causes of high blood pressure, also called hypertension. Low birth weights also have been associated with an increased risk for high blood pressure later in life.

The new study sought to determine if growth patterns in the first five years of life also were associated with a risk of high blood pressure in adulthood. The researchers tracked 679 young adults around age 25 in Britain.

They found that those who gained weight more rapidly in the first five months after birth and again from about age 2 to 5 were more likely to have high systolic blood pressure.

Immediate weight gain after birth also was linked to higher adult diastolic blood pressure, they found.

Systolic blood pressure is the pressure in the arteries while the heart contracts. Diastolic blood pressure is the pressure when the heart relaxes between beats.

"When trying to understand why some people get high blood pressure in later life, we need to consider a life course approach that considers early life as well as adult life risk factors such as dietary salt and obesity," Yoav Ben-Shlomo of the University of Bristol in Britain, who led the study published in the journal Hypertension, said in a statement.

High blood pressure — sometimes called the "silent killer" because it can go undetected for years — raises a person’s risk of heart disease and stroke.

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Here are helpful suggestions for people with a chronic illness, courtesy of the American Academy of Family Physicians:

• Take a look at your unhealthy behaviors, and choose one or several that you want to work on and improve.
• Come up with a specific plan and goals for dealing with each unhealthy behavior.
• Devise alternate plans to help you stick to your goals — for example, how to handle weather that affects your exercise plans.
• Make sure your goals are realistic, and that you feel confident that you can reach them.
• Talk to your doctor about your goals, and discuss your progress.

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