A significant proportion of patients experiencing a first MI lack prior symptoms or identified risk factors, and even those with known risk factors are often undertreated with preventive therapies.
In a large real-world dataset, half of the patients with first MI did not have documented antecedent symptoms, and approximately 1 in 5 had no previously identified SMuRFs. The majority of those who visited a physician prior to the MI with identified SMuRFs and symptoms were not using any preventive medical therapy. These findings highlight an urgent unmet need for improved tools to identify patients at risk of MI who may benefit from preventive therapy.
Nurmohamed et al. (Thu,) studied this question.