Success clearing clogged arteries

Angioplasties—procedures to open blocked arteries—have been successful about 10 percent more often in recent years than they were in the mid-1980s, and patients treated a few years ago were about 40 percent less likely to need later angioplasty or surgery than were patients a dozen years earlier.

Using national registries, David O. Williams of Brown University in Providence, R.I.,