Thrombolysis or Primary Angioplasty for Acute Myocardial Infarction?

To the Editor: In the clinical debate over the treatment of choice for acute myocardial infarction (Oct. 24 issue),^1,2 Lange and Hillis argue in favor of thrombolysis. Table 2 in their rebuttal contains two important errors that may mislead many readers. First, the cited report by Eckman et al.³ is a pooled analysis that included 614 patients from the study by O'Keefe et al.,⁴ originally reported by Kahn et al.⁵ In addition, 383 patients from the study by Brodie et al.⁶ were included in the pooled analysis by Eckman et al.³ Therefore, 997 patients treated with primary angioplasty are . . .