Clinical study data makes the world go around in cardiology and is the basis of setting guidelines in evidence-based medicine. However, hiccups in this data can remind us that there is often more than meets the eye in raw numbers, as is the case with two recent late-breaking news items in interventional cardiology. The first was clinical data in a large meta-analysis of trials showing increased mortality in patients treated with paclitaxel eluting peripheral artery disease stents and balloons.
