Effectiveness of Pharmacological Treatments for Heart Failure with Reduced Ejection Fraction¹

Despite the appearance of standard treatments for heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), there are still a large number of patients who have progressive deterioration of heart function and, inevitably, end-stage heart failure. In order to evaluate whether patients with HFrEF benefit from medications for treating chronic heart failure, a network meta-analysis was performed. Based on the 32 randomised controlled trials including a pool of 3,810 patients and 32 treatments, the effectiveness of the included pharmacological treatments for optimising the structural performance and improving the cardiac function in the management of patients with HFrEF was confirmed. Briefly, increasing left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF%) with levosimendan was better than placebo and improved ventricle contraction, controlling and regulating heart rate was better with n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n3-PUFA) and decreasing brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) was better with omega-3 and was the best therapy for improving ventricle wall tension.

References

1. Li et al. Medicine (Baltimore). 2020;99(5):e18341.