The proposed research involves the detailed analysis of the extensive data base which has been collected on 975 postinfarction patients who have been enrolled and followed in a prospective study during the past four years. The major long-term objectives are to characterize and identify those individuals who die of cardiac cause or develop myocardial reinfarction in the posthospital period after their index coronary event. In addition, the clinical course of patients surviving an acute myocardial infarction will be delineated to obtain a better understanding of the longitudinal aspects of this disease entity. Descriptive and inferential biostatistical techniques will be utilized, and the major analyses include: 1) comparison of the clinical characteristics of this heart attack population against existing postinfarction populations; 2) characterization of the clinical characteristics of the non-enrolled and enrolled patients as well as those who subsequently drop out; 3) identification of patients who die of cardiac cause at selected time intervals after myocardial infarction; 4) evaluation of the usefulness of clinical follow-up information as it pertains to subsequent cardiac events; 5) characterization of the cardiac mortality events to determine the potential for mortality reduction; 6) utilization of various actuarial methods to characterize the clinical course of patients during the four years after recovery from myocardial infarction; 7) case control analyses to evaluate the significance of selected clinical phenomena; 8) evaluation of the interactions and associations which exist among selected cardiac risk indicators; 9) characterization of the changing pattern of therapy during the posthospital period; 10) test and validate existing cardiac prognostic indices on the current population; 11) prepare a comprehensive report of the total research experience covering all administrative, technical, and scientific portions of the program; 12) develop a master file tape with a manual detailing the data management format for use by other qualified investigators in the field.
NIH ExPorter
NIH ExPorter