San Diego County hospitals meet marks on bypasses

San Diego County hospitals performing heart bypass surgery met state expectations in 2005, with risk-adjusted death rates close to California's average of 3.08 percent. But the number of bypasses has declined rapidly, according to an annual report released yesterday by the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. Surgeons performed fewer than 17,000 heart bypass surgeries at California hospitals in 2006--down 43 percent from 1997. In contrast, the number of angioplasty procedures, including insertion of tiny scaffolds called stents into arteries, exceeded 60,000 that year.