Science / Medicine : Heart Attack Survivors

A Harvard study has found drugs known as “beta blockers” are a “cost-effective” way of reducing the risk of subsequent heart attacks among heart attack survivors. Based on the findings, the researchers who conducted the study recommended doctors routinely prescribe beta blockers for all heart attacks survivors who can tolerate the drugs, even those at low risk for the later attacks.

Beta-adrenergic antagonists or beta blockers are a group of drugs that reduce the risk for a heart attack by blocking the hormone adrenaline, reducing the amount of stress on the heart.

Many researchers had argued that only heart attack survivors at very high risk for suffering a subsequent attack should routinely be placed on the drugs because the drugs are expensive and can cause side effects.

But in the study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Lee Goldman and his colleagues conducted the first detailed analysis of the costs of routinely prescribing the drugs. The researchers calculated beta blockers could be expected to reduce the death rate of heart attack survivors by 25% annually for the first three years after an attack and by 7% a year for the next three years.