Incidence of myocardial infarction

Method

Adjudicated myocardial infarction events during follow-up, ascertained by an endpoint committee against a universal-definition or trial-specific criterion, pooled as a hazard ratio, risk ratio, or odds ratio. Whether fatal infarctions are counted, and whether silent infarctions detected on ECG are counted, recorded on the edge.

The method is part of the endpoint identity. Studies measuring the same quantity by a different method are held as separate endpoints.

Notes

Confused with the composite of major adverse cardiovascular events, of which myocardial infarction is a component. Reviews describe MACE benefits as 'driven by the MI component'; recording both from the same analysis as independent endpoints counts the same events twice and inflates the apparent weight of evidence. Also distinct from incident coronary heart disease, a broader definition that folds in angina and revascularisation, and from cardiovascular mortality, which counts deaths rather than infarctions and can move in the opposite direction when better acute care converts fatal events into non-fatal ones.