Objective 　To evaluate the cardiac protection function of high thoracic epidural anesthesia (HTEA) for patients with acute coronary syndrome or heart failure.
Methods 　A literature search was conducted with computerized database on PubMed, EBSCO, Springer, Ovid, and CNKI from 1990 to May 2010. Further searches for articles were conducted by checking all references describing cardiac protection studies with HTEA. All included articles were assessed and data were extracted according to the standard of Cochrane review. The homogeneous studies were pooled using RevMan 4.2.10 software.
Results 　A total of 28 articles involving 1 041 patients were included. The results of meta-analyses showed that, a) cardiac function: HTEA could significantly improve ejection fraction of left ventricle (WMD= – 10.28, 95%CI – 14.14 to – 6.43) and cardiac output (WMD= – 1.26, 95%CI – 1.63 to – 0.89), contract left ventricular diastolic dimension (WMD= 5.02, 95%CI 3.72 to 6.32), increase E peak (WMD= – 17.50, 95%CI – 29.40 to – 5.59) and decrease A peak (WMD= 27.36, 95%CI 24.46 to 30.26); b) ischemic degree for patients with heart failure: the change of NST-T (WMD= 1.45, 95%CI 1.12 to 1.78) and ∑ST-T (WMD= 1.02, 95%CI 0.78 to 1.26) got significantly decreased after HTEA; c) ischemic degree for patients with acute coronary syndrome: HTEA could obviously lessen the times (WMD= 4.24, 95%CI 0.48 to 8.00) and duration (WMD= 23.29, 95%CI 4.66 to 42.11) of myocardial ischemia, decrease the times of heart attack (WMD= 3.44, 95%CI 0.92 to 5.97), and decrease the change of NST-T (WMD= 1.10, 95%CI 0.84 to 1.36) and ∑ST-T (WMD= 1.33, 95%CI 1.01 to 1.65); d) hemodynamic change for patients with acute coronary syndrome: HTEA could obviously decrease heart beat (WMD= 8.44, 95%CI 3.81 to 13.07) and systolic arterial pressure (WMD= 2.07, 95%CI 0.81 to 3.34), but not decrease the diastolic blood pressure (WMD= 2.06, 95%CI – 0.52 to 4.64) so as to avoid influencing the infusion of coronary artery; and e) influence on Q-T interval dispersion: HTEA could significantly decrease Q-Td (WMD= 9.51, 95%CI 4.74 to 14.27), Q-Tcd (WMD= 11.82, 95%CI 5.55 to 18.09), and J-Td (WMD= 9.04, 95%CI 2.30 to 15.79).
Conclusions 　High thoracic epidural anesthesia can obviously improve the systolic and diastolic function of left ventricle, decrease the heart beat and stabilize hemodynamic change, lessen the times and duration for myocardial ischemia, reserve the ST segment change, contract Q-T interval dispersion, which has to be further proved with more high quality studies.

Citation： TANG Bing,LI Xiaoqian,MA Hong,WANG Junke. Cardiac Protection of High Thoracic Epidural Anesthesia for Patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome or Heart Failure: A Systematic Review. Chinese Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, 2010, 10(11): 1276-1284. doi: 10.7507/1672-2531.20100584 Copy