Clinical effects of different dosages of Shenfu injection for treatment of elderly patients with refractory chronic congestive heart failure / 中国中西医结合急救杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the clinical effects of different dosages of Shenfu injection for treatment of elderly patients with refractory chronic congestive heart failure (CHF).Methods A prospective study was conducted, 360 patients with CHF from Longhua Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine were enrolled, and they were randomly divided into low dose, middle dose and high dose Shenfu injection groups. In the three groups, the patients received the same conventional medicine therapy, and additionally they were treated by low, medium and high dose Shenfu injection (60, 80, 100 mL/d, respectively), once a day. The therapeutic course was 10 days in the three groups. After treatment, the clinic therapeutic effect, left ventricular diastolic end diameter (LVEDD), left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), stroke volume (SV), cardiac output (CO), cardiac index (CI) and plasma B type natriuretic peptide (BNP) were observed in the three groups.Results The total therapeutic effective rate in middle dose Shenfu injection group was significantly higher than that in low dose and high dose Shenfu injection groups [82.5% (99/120) vs. 54.2% (65/120), 60.0% (72/120), bothP < 0.05]. In high dose Shenfu injection group, increase of blood pressure occurred in 15 cases (12.5%), but no such phenomenon appeared in low and middle dose Shenfu injection groups. In the three groups, no cardiac arrhythmia, liver function abnormality, myocardial enzymogram abnormality, etc. adverse reactions occurred. Compared with those before treatment, after treatment in three groups the LVEDD and BNP were significantly decreased, while LVEF, SV, CO and CI were markedly increased. The changes of above index in middle dose Shenfu injection group were more significant [LVEDD (mm) 46.1±6.3 vs. 58.3±4.4; LVEF 0.561±0.056 vs. 0.324±0.044, SV (mL) 58.1±6.3 vs. 35.7±5.4, CO (L/min) 5.78±0.60 vs. 4.21±0.78, CI (mL·s-1·m-2) 81.85±7.33 vs. 53.01±9.00, BNP (ng/L) 355.4±76.6 vs. 3 263.2±65.7, allP < 0.05]. Conclusion Shenfu injection 80 mL/d is the best effective dosage for treatment of elderly patients with refractory CHF and its incidence of adverse events is low.