One Treatment Is Better For Women With Clogged Arteries, Study Finds

FRIDAY, Jan. 2, 2026 (HealthDay News) — The best treatment for clogged arteries might be different for women than men, a new study says.

Females with heart disease are often treated with stenting, a procedure in which a tiny wire-mesh tube is slipped inside a blocked artery to keep it open.

But women might be better off if they received full-fledged bypass surgery to fix their clogged arteries, researchers recently reported in the European Heart Journal.

Women are about 30% more likely to die within a few years after undergoing stenting to reopen a blocked artery, compared to those who get bypass surgery, results showed.

They also have a higher risk of subsequent heart health emergencies like a heart attack, researchers found.

“Currently, women are about half as likely to undergo bypass surgery as men,” said lead researcher Dr. Kevin An, a clinical fellow in cardiothoracic transplantation and mechanical circulatory support at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City.

“Over the long term, bypass surgery seems to be more protective compared to stenting” among women, An said in a news release.

Large clinical trials typically don’t include many women, creating a blind spot when it comes to treating their heart health, researchers said. Historically, women make up only 20% to 25% of participants in these trials.

“If you are a man, and you need coronary revascularization, you will receive what we call evidence-based treatment, because there is strong evidence to guide your treatment decision,” senior researcher Dr. Mario Gaudino, a professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, said in a news release.

“If you are a woman, that's not the case. We don't have data, and so we use the data generated in men. However, we all know that women are not small men,” Gaudino said.

For the new study, researchers compared more than 2,000 Canadian women with high-risk artery blockages who received stenting against a like number who received bypass surgery.

In bypass surgery, researchers take a blood vessel from another part of the body to reroute blood flow around a clogged artery, researchers said.

Results showed that about 36% of women who underwent stenting wound up having a subsequent heart health emergency, such as a heart attack, stroke, need for repeated artery reopening or hospitalization for a heart condition.

By comparison, only 22% of women who received bypass surgery had such an event, researchers found.

However, researchers said more study is needed before treatment guidelines are changed.

The team is now conducting a new clinical trial that will compare both treatments in women with severe coronary artery disease.

“For now, treatment decisions should remain individualized,” An said. “Although our study suggests that bypass surgery may offer more long-term protection compared to stents, anatomical considerations, individual surgical risk and patient preferences remain critical.”

More information

Yale Medicine has more on coronary artery bypass surgery.

SOURCES: Weill Cornell Medicine, news release, Dec. 22, 2025; European Heart Journal, Nov. 25, 2025