Coronary Arteries, Myocardial Infarction, and History

To the Editor: We admire the medical advances described by Nabel and Braunwald (Jan. 5 issue). 1 However, we believe that Figure 1 of the article is misleading because it implies that the decline in cardiac deaths is associated with these advances. Although the authors note the importance of addressing risk factors, most of the time points refer to expensive procedures, some of which have not been shown to lengthen survival. For instance, the evidence of mortality benefit from drug-eluting stents over bare-metal stents is inconclusive. 2 The daily use of aspirin, which has been shown to decrease the rate of death . . .