Is there still a role for low-dose dopamine use in acute heart failure?:

Inotropes in Patients with Advanced Heart Failure: Not Only Palliative Care

Patients with advanced heart failure suffer from severe and persistent symptoms, often not responding disease-modifying drugs, a marked limitation of functional capacity and poor quality of life that can ameliorate with inotropic drugs therapy. In small studies, pulsed infusions of classical inotropes (ie, dobutamine and milrinone) are associated with improvement in hemodynamic parameters and quality of life in patients with advanced heart failure. However, because of the adverse effects of these drugs, serious safety issues have been raised. Levosimendan is a calcium-sensitizing inodilators with a triple mechanism of action, whose infusion results in hemodynamic, neurohormonal, and inflammatory cytokine improvements in patients with chronic advanced HF. In addition, levosimendan has important pleiotropic effects, including protection of myocardial, renal, and liver cells from ischemia-reperfusion injury, and anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects; these properties possibly make levosimendan an "organ protective" inodilator. In clinical trials and real-world evidence, infusion of levosimendan at fixed intervals is safe and effective in patients with advanced HF, alleviating clinical symptoms, reducing hospitalizations, and improving the quality of life. Therefore, the use of repeated doses of levosimendan could represent the therapy of choice as a bridge to transplant/left ventricular assist device implantation or as palliative therapy in patients with advanced heart failure.

A meta-analysis of low-dose dopamine in heart failure

BACKGROUND

Heart failure (HF) is a major health problem worldwide with no proven therapy. Low-dose dopamine (LDD) has been applied to patients with HF to enhance diuresis and preserve renal function since the last century. However, the efficacy of LDD in HF has been questioned by several studies recently. The purpose of this meta-analysis is to appraise the effects of the LDD to HF.

METHODS

Relative trials were identified in the PubMed, The Web of Science, OVID EBM Reviews and Cochrane databases, and the relevant papers were examined. Pooled mean difference (MD) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were estimated by random effects models. The primary endpoints in our meta-analysis were renal function, determined by blood urea, creatinine levels, eGFR and urine output. Secondary endpoints were rates of all-cause mortality and readmission after treatment.

RESULTS

Six randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and one retrospective study involving 587 patients were included in this analysis. LDD enhanced eGFR (MD, 7.44; 95% CI, 1.92-12.95; P=0.008), urine output (SMD, 0.58; 95% CI, 0.15-1.01; P=0.008) and decrease creatinine levels (MD, -0.36; 95% CI, -0.64/-0.08; P=0.004), blood urea (MD, -6.97; 95% CI, -13.12/-0.81; P=0.03). No statistically significant differences in the rates of mortality (RR, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.62-1.20, P=0.37) and readmission (RR: 0.86; 95% CI 0.47-1.56, P=0.62) were noted.

CONCLUSIONS

LDD indeed brought benefits in terms of promoting diuresis and preserving renal function for HF patients. It did not demonstrate statistical significance in rates of readmission nor mortality. The efficacy of LDD to HF patients should be confirmed by further large, high quality clinical trials.