When someone has a heart attack, he or she is immediately rushed to the emergency room. At that point, the doctor has to make a choice: either treat the patient with clot-busting drugs or perform invasive surgery.

 

But how do doctors decide which procedure is best? Do they rely on what's worked in the past, or do they choose based on the individual patient? How do these decisions influence patient outcomes? 

 

Janet Currie, Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School and chair of the Department of Economics, wanted to answer these questions. She discusses her findings on this episode of WooCast.

 

Currie, who is director of Princeton's Center for Wellbeing, is a panelist at the upcoming Princeton-Fung Global Forum, "Modern Plagues: Lesson Learned from the Ebola Crisis." Register here.