REBOOT - Changing clinical practice guidelines related to beta-blockers after a heart attack

Beta-blockers reduce heart rate, blood pressure, and arrhythmias, thereby improving heart function and blood flow to the coronary arteries.

These medications have a very high safety profile, yet they are not without potential side effects that can limit quality of life.

Currently, beta-blockers are recommended by clinical practice guidelines; nonetheless, these approvals are mostly based on decades-old trials from an era when blocked coronary arteries were not opened and patients had a very poor prognosis.

Nowadays, patients surviving a heart attack without deterioration in cardiac pump function, have a much better prognosis and the benefits of beta-blockers have to be re-tested.

The National Center for Cardiovascular Research in Madrid and the Mario Negri Institute in Milano are working on a joint project called REBOOT, that aims to study whether the treatment with beta-blockers in this context is beneficial. To evaluate this, data on the incidence of death, reinfarction, or admission for heart failure in patients will be collected for those patients with and without beta-blockers.

Over 100 small, medium, and large-sized hospitals in Spain and Italy, and several thousand investigators participate in REBOOT, which has the ambitious vocation of changing clinical practice guidelines related to beta-blockers after a heart attack.

Investigators and hospitals participate without any economic compensation in one of the greatest examples of altruism. REBOOT will enroll 8,500 patients in the largest endeavor worldwide in the field.