Acute myocardial infarction is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States and Canada. We performed a population-based study to compare the use of cardiac procedures and outcomes after acute myocardial infarction in elderly patients in the two countries.
We compared the use of invasive cardiac procedures and the mortality rates among 224,258 elderly Medicare beneficiaries in the United States and 9444 elderly patients in Ontario, Canada, each of whom had a new acute myocardial infarction in 1991.
The U.S. patients were significantly more likely than the Canadian patients to undergo coronary angiography (34.9 percent vs. 6.7 percent, P
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Comment In: N Engl J Med. 1997 Oct 2;337(14):1008; author reply 1008-99312670
Comment In: N Engl J Med. 1997 Oct 2;337(14):1008; author reply 1008-99312671
Comment In: N Engl J Med. 1997 May 22;336(21):1522-39154775
Comment In: N Engl J Med. 2001 Mar 8;344(10):774-511236791