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摘要

We thank Drs. Lange, Roewer and Kehl for expressing interest in our recent paper, using our findings that beta Mockers were unequally distributed between groups in our recent meta-analysis to highlight their recent investigations which suggest a, negative interaction between beta blockers and ischemic preconditioning in vivo? Their findings are both interesting and intrigu-ingy and come at a time when the efficacy of periopera-tive beta blockade has become increasingly controversial. The evidence cited refers to beta blockade in non-cardiac investigations, an important distinction since our report was limited to cardiac surgery. Coronary artery surgery has definitive periods of ischemia and reperfusion, a situation which is infrequent and unpredictable in non-cardiac surgery. Secondly, we emphasize, that unlike beta blockade, there is no clinical evidence of an ischemic preconditioning like the effect of inhaled anesthetics in non-cardiac surgery.