• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Drugs Have Cut U.S. Heart Deaths

Posted on: Wednesday, 28 March 2007, 15:00 CDT

U.S. researchers say use of drugs to control cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes have resulted in a steady decline in U.S. heart deaths.

In fact, such deaths have dropped 3 percent per year, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard Medical School, said this week.

Using pharmacy and Medicare records and statistical analyses, lead researcher Soko Setoguchi looked at how well patients did after being discharged from the hospital.

She said she picked the 30-day mark to eliminate the impact of angioplasty and stenting, since those procedures usually have been completed by 30 days. Setoguchi specifically credited the use of maintenance therapies, and in particular, the increasing use of statins, beta-blockers, and angiotensin-converting enzyme-inhibitors or angiotensin-II-receptor blockers after a heart attack, for the decrease in heart-related mortality.

Long-term prognosis in elderly patients with heart attacks has improved considerably over time, and this study supports evidence that this can be attributed to the increasing use of cardiovascular medicines after discharge from myocardial infarction, said Setoguchi.

The researchers delved through the records from 1995 to 2004 and identified nearly 22,000 patients in New Jersey and Pennsylvania who had been hospitalized due to a heart attack and survived more than 30 days after discharge.

Of the 21,848 patients in the study, about half eventually died during the 74,982 person-years of follow-up. After adjusting for demographics and comorbidities, the post-heart attack mortality rates showed significant decline from 1995 to 2004, corresponding to a 3 percent reduction in mortality each year.

Source: United Press International

More News in this Category