Here is the requisite survival curve. Patients had
a lower risk of death in the atenolol treated group. Now many
people worry that somehow the randomization didn't work. We have
followed these patients out to five years and the survival curves
are parallel, meaning that the difference is the difference early
after surgery. We prevented a perioperative problem. There is
no difference in the post hospital medications between the two
groups.
How could a therapy that was administered for only
seven days have an effect on two year mortality? We are preventing
the initiation of a problem in the perioperative period. If you
prevent the initiation of ischemic events by the perioperative
period, you prevent the morbidity and mortality in the subsequent
months.
