One of the misunderstandings of coronary heart disease: after angiography and stenting, you have to take medication for life, and if I had known this, I would not have put the stent in the first place. Answer: First of all, you need to know why you need to put a stent, which is because you are a patient with coronary heart disease, commonly known as coronary atherosclerosis leads to narrowing of the lumen of the blood vessel. When the lumen of the blood vessel is severely narrowed and thinned, a stent needs to be placed to expand and support the lumen. So all patients who have stents implanted are patients with severe coronary artery disease. Coronary artery disease, like other chronic diseases such as diabetes, should be treated with lifelong medications, including aspirin and statins, once diagnosed. Even if you don’t put a stent in, you still need to take these medications. Putting a stent in is just adding clopidogrel to these medications, but a stent can greatly reduce the rate of disease and death. This article was authorized for publication by Dr. Qing He.