Overview

• In patients leaving hospital with preserved cardiac function, beta-blockers did not reduce death, reinfarction or heart-failure hospitalizations during roughly four years of follow-up.
• Women in this group faced higher risk when treated: investigators reported a 45% increase in combined events, with an absolute mortality rise of 2.7% over about 3.7 years.
• The multicentre, randomized Reboot trial spanned 109 hospitals in Spain and Italy and was funded independently of industry.
• A meta-analysis including Reboot found benefit confined to patients with moderately reduced contractile function after infarction, not those with normal function.
• Findings were presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress and published in The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the European Heart Journal, prompting calls to revise guidelines and reduce unnecessary prescriptions with burdensome side effects.