People who suffer from serious heart disease could benefit similarly from balloon angioplasty as from major open heart surgery, said a study released by South Korean researchers.

Bypass surgery, in which vessels are taken from elsewhere in a patient’s body and sewn onto the heart to replace clogged ones, is the most common method of treating people with left main coronary artery disease.

But the results of the randomised clinical trial of 600 patients who received either angioplasty or bypass surgery showed similar survival rates and about the same number of major adverse events like heart attack and stroke after one year.

Doctors have long debated which method is best for treating the narrowing of the arteries that is the major cause of heart attacks. Angioplasty is less invasive but can require more repeat procedures if the artery restricts again over time.

“In spite of higher revascularisation after angioplasty, it can be a potential alternative if the two treatments have a similar risk of hard endpoints, such as heart attack, death or stroke,” said Seung-Jung Park, lead study author.

“At the time this study was initiated, there was great enthusiasm about the outcomes of angioplasty, and as a result, off-label use rapidly spread without enough evidence. Therefore, initiation of a randomised study was urgent.”

The Precombat trial’s findings were presented at the American College of Cardiology conference in New Orleans. The study was also being simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine.