Heart pills are ‘being needlessly given out’

THOUSANDS of heart attack patients are unnecessarily being prescribed beta blockers, research suggests.

The pills, which are given to 95 per cent of heart attack sufferers, make no difference to 12-month survival rates for many, a study of NHS records found.

Experts last night called for an overhaul of how they are prescribed and trials to examine the benefits.

Beta blockers have side effects including dizziness and tiredness – which suggests they may be doing more harm than good.

The NHS could also be spending money on medication that has little discernible benefit on many patients. UK guidelines recommend all heart attack patients receive the drugs, which block stress hormones and reduce blood pressure. They are known to help those with heart failure, a condition that often follows a heart attack.

But the study of 179,810 UK patients, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, found they made no difference in 12-month survival rates for those who had a heart attack but didn’t have heart failure. Professor Chris Gale, a cardiologist at Leeds University, which led the study, said: There is uncertainty in the evidence as to the benefit of beta blockers for patients with heart attack and who do not have heart failure.

‘This study suggests that there may be no mortality advantage associated with the prescription of beta blockers for patients with heart attack and no heart failure.’

Researchers used six years worth of NHS records to reach their findings.

Dr Marlous Hall, lead investigator and senior epidemiologist at the Leeds Institute of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine, said: ‘If you look at the patients who had a heart attack but not heart failure, there was no difference in survival rates between those who had been prescribed beta blockers and those that had not.’

She said large-scale patient trials are needed to back up the findings and examine other issues, such as whether beta blockers prevent future heart attacks, to help ‘personalise’ medications after a heart attack.‘This was an observational study based on robust statistical analysis of large scale patient data,’ Dr Hall said.

‘What we need now is a randomised patient trial.’