re: Medical Mistakes kill 440,000 per year in the U.S.

quote:

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You have no way of knowing whether or not open heart surgery prolonged your life.

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About a third of all open heart procedures are emergent, meaning nearly all of those patients would be dead without it. Another third or so are on patients who have had a heart attack or other cardiac event that has been stabilized but who have a very high mortality rate without surgical intervention.

So in other words, the majority of people who have open heart surgery are very likely to die relatively soon without it.