EBM Focus: Nonfatal Myocardial Infarction (MI) — Death of a Surrogate?

A heart attack used to mean almost certain death. Thanks to advances in the prevention and treatment of coronary artery disease (CAD), that is no longer the case. These improvements in management, however, make trials assessing death as a sole outcome not feasible due to the length of time or size of trials that would be required. In the early 1990s, Braunwald and colleagues argued that adding nonfatal complications to the outcome of death would improve trial efficiency and accelerate the pace of treatment innovations for the management of acute myocardial infarction…

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