Admission to the coronary care unit (CCU) has been shown to provide benefit to elderly patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI); however, its effectiveness has not been evaluated among the oldest patients.¹ AMI in very old patients has a high mortality.² Recent studies have questioned the benefit of standard treatments for these patients, so it is relevant to determine whether these patients should be systematically admitted to the CCU.³ We evaluated CCU admission and its relation with prognosis in the MI MORE 89 (myocardial infarction management: observation and registry in elderly patients aged 89 years or older) registry.

METHODS

MI MORE 89 has been described previously⁴ and comprises 100 consecutive cases of ST segment elevation AMI in patients ⩾ 89 years old. To assess the independent predictors of CCU admission, a backwards stepwise logistic regression analyses was performed with all relevant clinical variables. To assess the potential survival benefit associated with CCU admission logistic regression and Cox regression analyses were used. All analyses were performed with SPSS 11.0 statistical software (SPSS Inc, Chicago, Illinois, …