Surgical patients with known heart disease risks who are given beta blockers around the time of surgery have a significantly reduced risk of post-operative death compared with patients not given beta blockers, according to a study by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.
“We are reducing the short- and long-term risk of death after surgery by about 35 percent with beta blockers,” says lead author Arthur W. Wallace, MD, PhD, an anesthesiologist at SFVAMC and a professor of anesthesiology at the University of California, San Francisco. “And we are doing it for a total cost of about one dollar per patient.”
Beta blockers lower heart rate by blocking the effects of stress hormones, which in turn reduces the risk of chest pain or myocardial ischemia (reduced blood supply to the heart) that can occur when a rapidly beating heart does not receive adequate blood flow.
The study appears in the October 2010 issue of the journal Anesthesiology.
Surgical patients with known heart disease risks who are given beta blockers around the time of surgery have a significantly reduced risk of post-operative death compared with patients not given beta blockers, according to a study by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.
“We are reducing the short- and long-term risk of death after surgery by about 35 percent with beta blockers,” says lead author Arthur W. Wallace, MD, PhD, an anesthesiologist at SFVAMC and a professor of anesthesiology at the University of California, San Francisco. “And we are doing it for a total cost of about one dollar per patient.”
Beta blockers lower heart rate by blocking the effects of stress hormones, which in turn reduces the risk of chest pain or myocardial ischemia (reduced blood supply to the heart) that can occur when a rapidly beating heart does not receive adequate blood flow.
The study appears in the October 2010 issue of the journal Anesthesiology.