Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) Phase II Trial

To the Editor: For many, the important message of the TIMI Phase II trial (March 9 issue)¹ is not so much that the use of a conservative strategy after thrombolysis was vindicated, but that acute myocardial infarction could be treated in 3262 patients, approximately two thirds of whom were in a not-low-risk category, with a six-week mortality rate of under 5 percent. It is, however, difficult to interpret the results of the substudy of intravenous beta-blockade, a treatment that had been investigated extensively during the decade before the introduction of thrombolysis^2,3 and that experimental evidence had suggested should be more.