Conservative strategy for treatment of stable coronary artery disease

Core Tip

Core tip: Despite the evolution of myocardial revacul-arization techniques, the mainstay of treatment of stable coronary artery disease is optimal medical therapy. With the better understanding of the mechanisms underlying atherosclerosis, medical therapy develops and shows similar results in terms of survival and freedom from myocardial infarction compared to coronary interventions. Moreover, clinical trials have also demonstrated similar results between conservative and invasive strategies in various subgroups of patients, previously found to benefit from coronary interventions. In this review article, the authors discuss the results from main trials on specific groups of coronary artery disease patients which compared conservative and invasive strategies.