Are doctors exposing heart patients to unnecessary cardiac procedures?

Dr. Gregory Sampognaro is one of the busiest interventional cardiologists in the United States, clearing out clogged coronary arteries in hundreds of patients every year. Sampognaro ranked 17th in the U.S. in 2012 in the number of these procedures, according to a U.S. News & World Report analysis of Medicare data. What makes these numbers noteworthy is that Sampognaro works not in a medical mecca like New York or Chicago but in Monroe, Louisiana, a fading Mississippi-delta agricultural community of 54,000 in one of the poorest congressional districts in the U.S. Sampognaro is one of dozens of cardiologists in communities outside major metro areas who are performing catheterization procedures – such as diagnostic angiograms and artery-clearing angioplasties – at higher rates than doctors working at big city hospitals that serve as major cardiac referral centers.