THE REPLY of Hultgren et al1 to our COMMENTARY on the assessment of coronary bypass2 fails to answer the most serious criticisms of the Veterans Administration Cooperative Study, presents the data from Baylor College of Medicine in an inaccurate, distorted form, and draws yet another set of false conclusions.
Our original COMMENTARY was published on Feb 27,1978, only a few weeks after publication of the report of Read and associates.3 At the time our COMMENTARY was written, we quoted accurately from the only available source of the VA Cooperative Study.4 The mean follow-up of 21 months was therefore quoted accurately.4 Read and co-workers3 subsequently published a follow-up on their patients of up to four years. Only 114 of 332 surgical patients (34%) had, however, been followed up to four years compared with a full five or more years' follow-up for all our patients. To