Your Health: Jun. 29, 1998

Good News on Hearts

Patients who suffer a mild heart attack may not need angioplasty or bypass surgery. A study out last week finds that two years after the heart attack, the rates of recurrence and death are about the same for patients who undergo invasive procedures as for those who are treated conservatively, with, say, monitoring and medication.

Bad News for a Drug

Warning to high-blood-pressure patients: you must wait at least a week before switching from the hypertension drug Posicor--a calcium-channel blocker recalled earlier this month--to an alternative blocker, a new report cautions. Four patients have gone into shock--one died--after changing within 24 hours from Posicor to another drug. The quick switch caused blood pressure to plummet to dangerously low levels.

Good News on Coffee

Buzzed from java, but hate the bland taste of decaf? One day a full-flavored brew minus the caffeine could fill your mug. Scientists have figured out how to grow coffee plants that appear to lack the "caffeine gene." The leaves have negligible caffeine. Researchers will know about the beans when the plants mature in about two years.

Bad News on Pain

Up to 40% of cancer patients in nursing homes are in daily pain, the largest study of its kind concluded last week. And a quarter of them, largely minorities and the very old (85 and up), don't receive any pain medication at all--not even aspirin.

--By Janice M. Horowitz

Sources: New England Journal of Medicine; Journal of the American Medical Association; ForBio Inc.; Journal of the American Medical Association