New study: Elderly treated less aggressively for heart attack
By Jessica Walker | November 18th, 2009 | Category: News |An excerpt from a longer article in U.S. News & World Report:
While overall care of heart attack patients in the United States is good, gaps remain in the treatment of patients 80 and older, a new study suggests.
…analysis revealed that 86 percent of patients aged 80 and older received early beta blocker therapy, compared with 90 percent of patients aged 64 or younger. Only 43 percent of patients 80 and older received balloon angioplasty within 90 minutes of hospital arrival, compared with 54 percent of younger patients.
Older patients had a far higher rate of in-hospital deaths (11.8 percent vs. 2.4 percent) and were less likely than younger ones to be taking statins when discharged from hospital (76 percent vs. 92 percent).




