Some of the increased cardiac mortality among patients with schizophrenia can be reduced if these patients are efficiently administered combinations of secondary preventive treatments after cardiac events, according to a recent study. This nationwide cohort study included individuals admitted with first-time myocardial infarction (MI) from January 1, 1995, to December 31, 2015. The cohort was dichotomously divided by a diagnosis of schizophrenia and consisted of 105,018 patients with MI, including 684 patients with schizophrenia and 104,334 general population patients, with a total follow-up of 796,435 person-years and 28,059 deaths. Researchers found:

• Patients diagnosed with schizophrenia who did not receive cardioprotective treatment had the highest mortality rate compared with the general population treated, with treated patients diagnosed with schizophrenia having an increased hazard ratio of 1.97.
• The analyses of the associations of different cardiac therapy strategies with mortality rates revealed that patients with schizophrenia who were treated with any combination of triple therapy had mortality rates similar to those observed in the general population in the multivariable analysis.