Underuse of Coronary Revascularization Procedures in Patients Considered Appropriate Candidates for Revascularization

Deciding which patients should undergo coronary revascularization remains a key challenge in the management of coronary artery disease, with individual physicians' practice patterns varying widely. 1 The recommendation of revascularization is usually made by the patient's own specialist, based on an implicit judgment that the benefits of the procedure in terms of survival or decreased morbidity outweigh the risks. Expert panels' ratings of the appropriateness of revascularization in patients with a variety of typical indications, determined according to the RAND–University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) method, make this judgment explicit, by making it possible to assign patients a score on . . .