CABG – commercial opportunity, or opportunity to do good?

I was sequentially appalled and enthused by a Duck-Duck-Go search I ran yesterday. I searched on Global CABGs.


The first document I read ( https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/coronary-artery-bypass-grafts-cabg-market-size-share-global-trend-industry-news-industry-demand-business-growth-top-key-players-update-business-statistics-and-research-methodology-by-forecast-to-2027-2021-05-13 ) a sales blurb from a US market research business that is promoting the financial ‘opportunity’ presented by major surgery. Life saving surgery it seems has a deal of commercial promise to the manufacturers of things, tools, monitors, drugs, etc. that can be used in the CABG process. It might also stimulate US Doctors to study Cardio-Thoracic surgery.

To be honest, I was disgusted by the abject commercial focus of this so-called ‘report’. There was no attempt to establish the value to society of an effective CABG delivered to a needy recipient. It was all about the money to be made from the doing of the CABG. And the capitalists wonder why they are disliked (‘though most seemingly don’t care)?


The second document ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211816018300942 ) which I read closely, was not an attempt to sell me a report but was in fact a whole, no cost, report on the pressing need for CABGs and the nature of CABG’s spread across the globe – including the factors that presently slow its progress. Worth a read, but very much a scientific document, so a bit of a ‘dry read’ for the non-scientist. Whilst much of the news purveyed is cause for concern, it is the very fact of its existence as a report (a free one at that) that is uplifting to me.

That a team of clearly knowledgable folk would toil at such a report with the sole purpose of providing information to those who might be interested is, to me, proof of their humanity. Something that seems to be somewhat lacking in the Marketwatch report!


Those of us fortunate enough to live in a HIC (High Income Country) can likely experience a CABG first hand, if we need to – unless we live in a HIC with a US-style ‘health system’ in which case we would also need to be well insured. Luckily I live in Australia which, for the moment, maintains a ‘health service’ not unlike Canada’s – which thankfully maintains vestiges of the UK’s NHS. Thank you Nye Bevan.