FDA Recommends Approval of Muraglitazar, But May Need To Reconsider; Which Antipsychotics Are More Dangerous?; Should CPOE Undergo Evaluation?; New Treatment for Tennis Elbow; FDA Actions
Given the impressive results of beta-blockers added to angiotensin-converting-enzyme (ACE) inhibitors in heart failure patients, many have suggested that had beta-blockers been studied first for heart failure, they would have been so impressive that we would start them before ACE inhibitors.
For the past 3 decades, beta-blockers have been first-line therapy for hypertension. However, recently the efficacy of beta-blockers for treating primary hypertension has been challenged. Thus, Lindholm and colleagues from Sweden conducted a meta-analysis of 13 randomized, controlled trials for the treatment of primary hypertension where a beta-blocker was used in at least 50% of the patients.
The emergency treatment of patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI) with intravenous then oral beta-blockers has become the standard of care based upon randomized trials of over 27,000 patients. However, most of these trials were done before the advent of reperfusion therapy and aggressive platelet antagonists.
Ischemia during stress echocardiography is an independent predictor of death and ICD therapy in patients with coronary heart disease at high risk of arrhythmic death.
