Association between perioperative beta blocker use and cancer survival following surgical resection

Background — Recent studies have demonstrated an association between beta-blocker exposure and improved survival in multiple cancer types. We sought to investigate the effects of beta-blockers at the time of index surgery for breast, lung, and colorectal cancer.

Materials and Methods — Using linked data from a provincial cancer registry, we conducted a retrospective matched cohort study comparing disease-specific and overall survival between patients over age 64 exposed and not exposed to beta-blockers before and after index surgical resection for breast, lung and colorectal cancer between April 1st, 2002 and December 31st, 2010. A high-dimensional propensity score was used to match patients and Cox proportional hazard models were used to estimate relative risks of the outcomes.

Results — 30,020 patients were included in the final matched cohorts. Mean follow up time for breast, lung, and colorectal cancer was 57.6 ± 30.5, 43.1 ± 28.7, and 53.4 ± 31.0 months, respectively. The adjusted hazard ratio for disease-specific mortality for patients exposed to beta-blockers was 1.03 (0.83-1.29) for breast, 1.05 (0.92-1.20) for lung, and 1.10 (0.96-1.25) for the colorectal cancer cohort.

Conclusions — In this large population-based study, no association between perioperative beta-blocker exposure and improved cancer-specific survival for breast, lung, or colorectal cancer was demonstrated.