Prescribing beta-blockers to patients who have suffered a heart attack but are free from heart failure is ineffective, according to the results of a study published in the medical journal Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Researchers at the University of Leeds, Edinburgh, University College London, Bart’s Heart Center London, the NHS Foundation Trust in the UK conducted a study with 179,810 patients who had had a heart attack but who do not have heart failure treated or not with beta blockers. These drugs are prescribed after a heart attack to regulate the activity of the heart and the heart and allow a decrease of the blood pressure.
The results of this study show that beta blockers do not reduce mortality in patients who do not have heart failure.
Indeed, this treatment did not increase the chances of survival at one year in these patients who had not suffered cardiac damage, compared to 9,335 patients without a prescription for beta-blockers.
Beta-blockers reduce the risk of co-morbidities
The study showed that patients who were not treated with beta-blockers had a more serious risk of co-morbidity than those treated, such as diabetes (15.4% vs. 11.6%), chronic renal failure (3.2% vs. 1.6%),asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (20.6% against 7.8%), cerebrovascular disease (7.0% against 3.8%) and the risk of cardiovascular accidents (76.5% against 69.8%).
“Our study reveals an absence of 1-year survival benefit with beta-blockers in heart attack survivors without heart failure or systolic left ventricular dysfunction,” the study authors explain. “We need to re-examine through further research the benefit-risk balance of beta-blockers and their routine prescription in this group of patients. If these results must be interpreted with great caution: in particular they do not prejudge the absence of other advantages for patients, apart from mortality, ”they conclude.
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