Inexpensive Drug Minimizes Heart Attack Damage

Treating heart attack patients with the inexpensive and well-studied beta-blocker metoprolol while they are in transit to the hospital can significantly reduce damage to the heart, study results suggest. Researchers at Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC) in Spain and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York studied 270 patients who were randomly assigned to receive either intravenous metoprolol or a placebo treatment at the moment of diagnosis of myocardial infarction during ambulance transit to hospital. One week after infarction the participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the damage that had occurred to the heart. Results showed that patients who received metoprolol had significantly smaller infarcts than those who received the control treatment. The researchers believe that the potential savings from this intervention may go far beyond the low cost of metoprolol itself, as patients with less-extensively damaged heart muscle are less likely to need more costly treatments such as an implantable defibrillator or to require costly hospitalization for treatment of heart failure. Borja Ibáñez, MD, PhD, head of the Experimental Cardiology Group at CNIC and joint lead investigator of the study said: “The savings in healthcare costs will run into millions; a per-patient outlay of less than €2(or less than $3) will over the years save thousands.”