14. Patient Profiles: Ischemic Episodes

Ischemia. Did atenolol prevent ischemia? YES! Prophylactic perioperative atenolol reduced the incidence of myocardial ischemia. Now, if this result is all we found you would not have to be reading this web page or listening to me pontificate on perioperative cardiac risk. You could just ignore the paper. BUT, for one thing. We know that perioperative myocardial ischemia measured in this exact manner, in this exact population, leads to a nine (9) fold increased risk of cardiac events and two (2) fold increase in two year mortality. So, reducing perioperative myocardial ischemia ought to be good for patients.

Ischemic Episodes