The practicing physician's current perspective on therapeutic options in coronary artery disease

Over the past decades the management of patients with stable as well as unstable manifestations of coronary artery disease has evolved in every aspect of routine clinical practice. Modern diagnostic modalities allow reliable and objective assessment of both the anatomical and functional consequences of the early as well as advanced stages of this disease, which remains one of the most important causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Pharmacological therapy now includes several classes of drugs with mortality benefits documented by randomised controlled trials. Surgical and percutaneous revascularisation techniques have shown rapid technical improvements and are now applicable in a wide range of clinical conditions. In this paper we will attempt to place the current status of the three therapeutic options for patients with coronary artery disease into perspective. It is important to realise that it is impossible to write a complete overview, a Pubmed search: 'PCI or drug therapy or surgery for coronary artery disease' results in 1,152,117 hits. Therefore, we have chosen the viewpoint of the practicing physician to synthesise this abundance of information in the context of modern clinical practice in a high volume cardiothoracic and cardiological practice.