By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) -A decades-old pill remains helpful for heart attack patients even with modern treatments that can prevent lasting damage to heart muscle, two large trials have shown.

Still unclear is whether all patients, or only some, benefit from so-called beta-blocker drugs, which are typically prescribed to everyone after a heart attack.

Two sharply contradictory reports were presented on Saturday at a large cardiology meeting in Madrid and published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

“It is not unusual for trials to yield different results,” said Dr. Borja Ibanez of Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III in Madrid, who led one of the trials.

“Somewhat uncommon is to see two trials with apparently divergent findings presented on the same day.

See Full Page