Primary and secondary prevention of myocardial infarction

The prevention of coronary artery disease (CHD) and particularly of myocardial infarction (MI) is based on some well designed strategies aimed at treating both asymptomatic high-risk patients (primary prevention) and patients with established CHD (secondary prevention). A positive impact from primary prevention can be basically achieved trough a reduction in high blood pressure and by correcting dyslipidemia. The benefit can be substantially increased by smoking cessation, increasing physical exercise, reduction of body weight, use of post-menopausal oestrogen, moderate alcohol consumption and use of high doses of vitamin E in those patients who are compliant with the specific strategies. Secondary prevention of MI can be again obtained by controlling blood pressure and reducing serum cholesterol in patients surviving acute MI who can also benefit from the administration of beta-blockers, aspirin and probably ace-inhibitors particularly in presence of left ventricular dysfunction. We suggest that in both arms of prevention, significant results can be achieved mainly by a multifactorial approach capable of correcting all the modifiable risk factors that contribute to the rather complex pathogenesis of CHD.