Clinical assessment following coronary revascularization.

There remains a need to establish adequate protocols for investigating the short- and long-term follow-up of revascularization procedures. For coronary angioplasty the most reliable basis for decision-making in managing patients is the symptomatology of the patient. For bypass surgery a protocol should be established to evaluate patients late, at 5 to 10 years following bypass surgery, in particular those with saphenous vein grafting, as graft and patient survival begins to fall after this period. Investigation after this may be too late for many patients who may already have several occluded grafts and poor left ventricular function, two of the most important prognostic factors post bypass surgery. The improvement and refinement of non-invasive investigations has led to a better understanding of the value and limitations of many of these tests, but it is particularly important that the limitations of many investigation are fully appreciated when they are used to influence clinical decisions. In this regard, a study comparing and integrating the predictive value of the persistence or return to symptoms, a positive non-invasive test, and a positive invasive test would surely prove invaluable.