• 1. Institute of Medical Information, CAMS and PUMC, Beijing 100020, P. R. China;
  • 2. Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing 100005, P. R. China;
  • 3. School of Nursing, Peking Union Medical College, Beijing 100144, P. R. China;
ZOU Haiou, Email: haiou5275@163.com
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Objective To systematically review the efficacy of palliative care in heart failure patients. Methods PubMed, EMbase, CINAHL, The Cochrane Library, VIP, CNKI, CBM and WanFang Data databases were electronically searched to collect randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on the efficacy of palliative care in heart failure patients from inception to September 2021. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies; then, meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3 software. Results A total of 11 RCTs involving 912 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that palliative care could improve the quality of life of patients with heart failure (KCCQ & McGill QoL: SMD=0.85, 95%CI 0.13 to 1.58, P=0.02; MLHFQ: SMD=−1.32, 95%CI −2.10 to −0.54, P=0.000 9), reduce the level of depression (SMD=−0.58, 95%CI −0.87 to −0.28, P=0.000 1) and anxiety (SMD=−0.51, 95%CI −0.89 to −0.13, P=0.008), improve the adverse symptoms (SMD=−1.46, 95%CI −2.67 to −0.24, P=0.02), reduce the readmission rate (RR=0.64, 95%CI 0.42 to 0.98, P=0.04) and the per hospitalization time (MD=−0.94, 95%CI −1.28 to −0.60, P<0.000 01). However, it had no obvious effect on the mortality of patients (RR=1.00, 95%CI 0.63 to 1.57, P=0.99). Conclusion Current evidence shows that palliative care can improve the quality of life, emotional state and adverse symptoms of patients with heart failure, and reduce the length of hospital stay and readmission rate. Due to limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high-quality studies are required to verify the above conclusion.

Citation: ZHOU Jiayin, ZONG Wenjie, ZOU Haiou. Efficacy of palliative care in heart failure patients: a systematic review. Chinese Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, 2022, 22(2): 148-153. doi: 10.7507/1672-2531.202110036 Copy

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