Long-Term Management of Patients with Coronary Artery Disease

D R. LAURENCE B. ELLIS: (hir coiifereiice today is on the long-term management of patients with chronic coronary artery disease, with particular emphasis on the more radical methods of therapy. This is intended to be a practical discussion for practicing physicians and our hope is to put into perspective the special methods of treatment that have been advocated, either directly or by implication, as the result of some of the more recent investigations. Anyone who reads medical journals or even any of the printed matter offered by the pharmaceutical houses is bombarded by various special methods of treating coronary disease. One can but wonder whether he may not be neglecting some useful therapeutic device that might benefit the future course of his patients. With the aid of experts in several special fields I shall attempt to separate some of the wheat from the chaff in this important and perplexing problem. I need not remind you that coronary atherosclerosis occurs to a greater or lesser extent almost universally in human beings and its fatal consequences are so numerous that the (lisease is niow the leading cause of death in