Assuming that blood pressure is lowered equivalently, diuretics are more effective than angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs), calcium channel blockers (CCBs), and alpha-adrenergic receptor blockers (alpha-blockers) at preventing heart failure, and they are more effective than ACEIs and alpha-blockers at preventing strokes. Compared with beta-adrenergic receptor blockers (beta-blocke...

BACKGROUND Beta blockers have been used widely in the treatment of hypertension and are recommended as first-line drugs in hypertension guidelines. However, a preliminary analysis has shown that atenolol is not very effective in hypertension. We aim to substantially enlarge the data on atenolol and analyse the effect of different beta blockers. METHODS The Cochrane Library and PubMed were sea...

The utility and safety of β-blockers in pulmonary hypertension is controversial. Anecdotal reports suggest that β-blockers may be harmful in these patients. The aim of our study was to evaluate outcomes of β-blocker use in pulmonary hypertension.We reviewed patients from our pulmonary hypertension registry between 2000 and 2011. Patients who continued to use β-blockers were compared to those wh...

Antihypertensive Treatment and Left Ventricular Mass Reduction: The Importance of Choosing the Comparator To the Editor: The meta-analysis by Fagard et al1 on the effects of various antihypertensive drug classes on left ventricular mass is based on the pairwise comparisons of the original studies and avoids the problems with previous meta-analyses, which considered each treatment arm of the dif...

BACKGROUND The mainstay of therapy for catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (CPVT) is maximal doses of beta-blockers. However, although beta-blockers prevent exercise-induced ventricular tachycardia (VT), most patients continue to have ventricular ectopy during exercise, and some studies report high mortality rates despite beta-blockade. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study wa...