Gina Kolata writes about some different thinking with respect to opening arteries (using stents & bypass surgery) vis a vis heart attack risks:

But the new model of heart disease shows that the vast majority of heart attacks do not originate with obstructions that narrow arteries.
Instead, recent and continuing studies show that a more powerful way to prevent heart attacks in patients at high risk is to adhere rigorously to what can seem like boring old advice ? giving up smoking, for example, and taking drugs to get blood pressure under control, drive cholesterol levels down and prevent blood clotting.
Researchers estimate that just one of those tactics, lowering cholesterol to what guidelines suggest, can reduce the risk of heart attack by a third but is followed by only 20 percent of heart patients.