HealthDay News — For patients with myocardial infarction (MI), β-blocker treatment beyond 1 year after MI does not appear to reduce the risk for mortality or further MI, according to a nationwide cohort study published in Heart.
Divan Ishak, MD, from Uppsala University in Sweden, and colleagues conducted a nationwide cohort study involving 43,618 patients with MI (median age, 64 years; 25% female) between 2005 and 2016. Follow-up began 1 year after hospitalization (index date) and lasted a median of 4.5 years. Patients were categorized into 2 groups according to β-blocker treatment; 78.5% and 21.5% of patients received β-blocker treatment and did not receive β-blocker treatment, respectively, at the index date.
The unadjusted rate of primary outcome (composite of all-cause mortality, myocardial infarction, unscheduled revascularization, and hospitalization for heart failure) was lower among those who received vs those who did not receive β-blocker treatment (3.8 vs 4.9 events per 100 person-years; hazard ratio, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.73 to 1.04). However, the risk for the primary outcome did not differ according to β-blocker treatment after inverse propensity score weighting and multivariable adjustment (hazard ratio, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.93 to 1.04). When censoring for β-blocker discontinuation or treatment switch during follow-up, findings were similar.
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“Long-term β-blocker therapy was not associated with improved cardiovascular outcomes during median follow-up of 4.5 years,” the authors write. “These findings were consistent across individual secondary endpoints and across patient subgroups.”
Several authors disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
