The survival of 1,657 patients with angiographically proved coronary artery disease (CAD) was studied for 4 years (mean 2.0 +/- 1.2) during the 1980s to examine the prognostic importance of multiple clinical variables. One hundred of the 1,049 medically treated patients (9.5%) and 31 of the 608 surgically treated patients (5.1%) died. Multivariate analyses revealed that the strongest prognostic variables for survival in the medical group were indexes of left ventricular function (p less than 0.0001), severity of coronary stenoses (p less than 0.0001) and age (p = 0.005). However, only age (p less than 0.0001) was a significant prognostic variable in the surgically treated group. This study emphasizes the lack of prognostic significance of left ventricular function indexes and severity of coronary stenoses in surgically treated patients with CAD. These results continue the trend toward improved surgical survival shown in recent years.