The committee agreed that cardiovascular mortality and heart failure related hospital admissions would be considered if the all-cause data was not available. The following outcomes were considered important: improvement of NYHA class and adverse events (stroke, bradycardia and hypotension). Overall, the committee considered that all-cause mortality was the most essential of the critical outcomes for decision making. No evidence was found for the following outcomes: quality of life, improvement of NYHA class, bradycardia and hypotension. Quality of the clinical evidence The only included study was an individual patient data meta-analysis (IPD). The quality of the evidence ranged from high to low quality across the outcomes. The committee agreed that all-cause mortality was the most essential of the critical outcomes. The quality of the evidence for this outcome was moderate due to imprecision of the confidence interval around the point estimate. For heart-failure related hospital admission the evidence was rated as moderate quality due to the indirectness of the outcome. This was due to the fact that this outcome would not capture those hospitalisations that may relate to the intervention but are not considered heart failure related . For the adverse outcome of stroke, the quality of the evidence was rated as low due to wide confidence intervals surrounding the point estimate. Prior to commencing the review, the committee noted that only bisoprolol, carvedilol, and nebivolol were licensed for use in heart failure in the UK. Trade-off between clinical benefits and harms Evidence was found on the following outcomes: all-cause mortality, unplanned hospitalisation and stroke. The committee considered that all-cause mortality was the most essential of the critical outcomes for decision making and the discussion of the committee focussed on this outcome. 