Well I think we probably would be perhaps less constrained. Of course there are other reasons why we have difficulties in providing the sort of interventional service that we would like to see. The data - looking promising, but I don't think even the strongest enthusiast would wish to apply the stent technology to the degree that some of the European and American centres wish to apply it. There's a new stent out every month virtually. Yes, that is certainly the case, and it's one of the other examples of an inherently cash limited system operated on by revenue from taxpayers' pockets.
Hard choices have to be made.
It's at the present very much held in the hands of the general practitioner who we encourage to prescribe the statin lowering drugs, the cholesterol lowering drugs, but who himself might wish to buy hip replacements for his patients. The patient has very little say, and it's made probably a bit worse by the fact that there's very little information distributed to the patients to empower the patients. Dr Rod Foale is Director of Cardiovascular Sciences at St Mary's Hospital, London. When I was in North Carolina a couple of weeks ago, I visited one of the US's acknowledged authorities on the latest advances in stenting, including in the prevention of strokes. And Associate Professor of Medicine.