Possibilities of therapy with beta‑blockers in the perioperative period in patients during cardiac and extra‑cardiac surgery

Сardiac complications are the most frequent non-surgical complications after surgical interventions, increasing the length of the patient’s stay in the hospital, the economic costs and the percentage of deaths. The frequency of patients with cardiovascular diseases who require surgery is also high. Optimization of drug therapy in the perioperative period is one of the factors of successful outcome of the surgical intervention.

The pathophysiological basis for the development of many cardiac events in the postoperative period is an increase in the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, which leads to an increase in heart rate (HR) and myocardial oxygen demand. These changes may increase the risk of myocardial ischemia, arrhythmias, and other cardiovascular events in the early postoperative period. For example, the development of myocardial infarction (MI) in the perioperative period leads to an increase in hospital mortality by 15–25 %, and increase in the risk of developing cardiac death in the next few months.

The main group of drugs for relieving these effects is beta-blockers (BB). This drug class has a wide range of applications: treatment of angina, arrhythmias, hypertension, MI, heart failure. Currently, there is a large evidence for the possibility and feasibility of using BB in patients undergoing surgery.

In this article, the authors highlights the issues of prescribing BB in patients with comorbid pathology in the perioperative period. The analysis and comparison of studies on various aspects of BB use in the perioperative period performed. Currently, there is a mixed opinion about the benefits and risks of perioperative therapy of BB, which causes the high relevance of this issue for discussion.

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