In a study presented at the European Society of Cardiology last week, investigators from Argentina reported that vaccinating cardiac patients against influenza results in a 66% reduction in cardiovascular death.
In their study, researchers from Buenos Aires enrolled 200 patients with acute myocardial infarction (heart attack,) and an additional 100 patients who were receiving elective angioplasty and/or stent. Patients were enrolled during the 2001 flu season, and were randomized to receive either or flu vaccine or no vaccine. At the end of 1 year, those patients randomized to flu vaccine had a significantly reduced risk of death.
These results support results published earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine suggesting that cardiac patients receiving the flu vaccine had a reduced risk of hospitalization for cardiac disease, of stroke, and of death.
DrRich comments:
None of these results are considered definitive by scientists, who are now calling for large randomized trials to prove that flu vaccine is beneficial to cardiac patients.Such trials are certainly a good idea, but will require at least a few years to organize and conduct. In the meantime, if you have cardiac disease there would seem to be little reason to wait for these larger trials and whatever definitive data they may provide. The risk of receiving flu vaccine is small, and the potential benefit is large.
