HUANG Changquan , DONG Birong
  • Department of geriatrics, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu610041, China;
DONG Birong, Email: birongdong@hotmail.com
Trimetazidine; Congestive heart failure; Systematic review; Efficacy; Safety
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Objective 　To evaluate the efficacy and safety of trimetazidine (TMZ) for chronic congestive heart failure.
Methods 　We searched The Cochrane Library (Issue 3, 2006), MEDLINE (1990-2006), EMBASE (1990-2004), and the Chinese Biomedicine Database (1990- 2006 ) for parallel group randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and cross-over design trials comparing TMZ and placebo or open controls for patients with heart failure.We used The Cochrane Collaboration’s RevMan 4.2 software for data analyses.
Results 　Four RCTs and two cross-over design trials were included. Meta-analyses showed that: compared with the control group, TMZ may improve the NYHA cardiac functional grade (RR 0.85, 95%CI 0.76 to 0.95), increase the total exercise time (WMD 51.40 seconds, 95%CI 15.56 to 87.25), the maximal metabolic equivalents (WMD 0.82, 95%CI 0.28 to 1.37), and the ejection fraction (WMD 7.29%, 95%CI 6.28 to 8.31), but may decrease the left ventricular end-diastolic volume (WMD –12.19 ml, 95%CI –15.29 to –9.09), the left ventricular end-diastolic diameter (WMD –6.05 mm, 95%CI –7.10 to –4.99), the left ventricular end-systolic volume (WMD –16.94 ml, 95%CI –20.34 to –13.55), the left ventricular end-systolic diameter (WMD –5.42 mm, 95%CI –5.98 to –4.86), and the serum brain natriuretic peptide (WMD –239.59 pg/ml, 95%CI –276.53 to –202.65). TMZ may also improve the quality of life (WMD 12.36, 95%CI 5.16 to 19.55).
Conclusions 　TMZ plus standard medical therapy has a beneficial effect on the indices of cardiac function, and may also improve the patient’s quality of life. However, because available RCTs for this systematic review are too small and poor quality, (mainly focusing on the heart failure induced by ischemic heart diseases and merely taking intermediate indices as outcome measures), further high-quality large-scale RCTs with death as the endpoint and which include subgroup analysis of non-ischemic heart failure, are required in order to provide more reliable evidence.

Citation： HUANG Changquan,DONG Birong. Effect of Trimetazidine for Congestive Heart Failure: A Systematic Review. Chinese Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, 2007, 07(1): 37-44. doi: Copy