In patients with myocardial infarction (MI) and anemia, a "liberal" red blood cell (RBC) transfusion strategy did not significantly reduce the risk of recurrent MI or death within 30 days compared with a "restrictive" transfusion strategy, in the 3500-patient MINT trial.
"While not statistically significant, the results consistently favored a liberal transfusion strategy," Jeffrey L. Carson, MD, from Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson, New Brunswick, New Jersey, said in a press briefing.
He presented the study in a late-breaking trial session at the American Heart Association (AHA) 2023 Scientific Sessions today, and it was simultaneously published online in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"Whether to transfuse is an everyday decision faced by clinicians caring for patients with acute MI," Carson said.
"We cannot claim that a liberal transfusion strategy is definitively superior based on our primary outcome," he said, but "the 95% confidence interval is consistent with treatment effects corresponding to no difference between the two transfusion strategies and to a clinically relevant benefit with the liberal strategy."
"In contrast to other trials in other settings," such as anemia and cardiac surgery, Carson said, "the results suggest that a liberal transfusion strategy has the potential for clinical benefit with an acceptable risk of harm."
