EPIC (Evaluating Perioperative Ischemia Reduction by Clonidine)
Status:
Unknown status
Trial end date:
2009-12-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
In Canada 1 patient in 200 dies within 30 days of an operation. More than half of these
deaths are the direct result of a heart related complication. This cause of death happens 4
times more often than in the same people who do not have an operation. We do not have an
effective way to stop these heart attacks. Stress causes the heart rate and the blood
pressure to go up which causes the heart to work harder and may be the reason for some heart
attacks. One group of drugs that stops the heart from working harder and decrease the number
of heart related complications are BETA-BLOCKERS. We wish to add another drug, which has been
shown to reduce heart rate and blood pressure, will reduce the number of heart attacks after
an operation. CLONIDINE has been shown to reduce heart attacks after operations. Since we
know it is not a good idea to stop beta-blockers we want to see if giving clonidine as well
as a beta-blocker is safe and has the desired effect of decreasing the number of heart
attacks. We want to find out how good the combination of these two drugs are at decreasing
the number of heart attacks.
Hypothesis: The addition of clonidine to chronic b-blockade will reduce mortality and cardiac
morbidity among intermediate-to-high risk patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery.