It seems like a foregone conclusion. People with mild symptoms of irregular heartbeat have a higher risk of sudden death. So give them drugs proven to help treat arrhythmia and you'll save lives. This was just what doctors did in the 1980s. There was one problem: the drugs had been tested on and approved for people with severe arrhythmias. When clinical trials were eventually carried out in people with mild arrhythmias, they showed that, contrary to all expectations, the drugs doubled or tripled the risk of death.
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