Overview

• The REBOOT randomized trial enrolled 8,505 patients in 109 hospitals in Spain and Italy and found no reduction in death, reinfarction, or heart-failure hospitalization with beta-blockers after uncomplicated myocardial infarction with preserved ejection fraction.
• Spain’s Secretary of State for Health, Javier Padilla, said the findings are relevant but called for careful analysis before changing prescriptions based on a single study.
• Sociedad Española de Cardiología president Luis Rodríguez Padial urged patients not to be alarmed and to review therapy with their physicians rather than stopping medication on their own.
• An Oxford–Karolinska analysis reported higher long-term mortality in some women under 65 treated with beta-blockers after uncomplicated infarction, a signal the SEC notes is uncertain and not replicated in a subsequent Scandinavian study.
• The REBOOT results were published in The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet and presented at the European Society of Cardiology congress in Madrid, with investigators noting an inconclusive possible benefit in patients with moderately reduced ejection fraction.