2016/06/21
Administration of beta-blockers has already become an established method of treating chronic heart failure. Indeed, these drugs are essential in our daily clinical practice to evaluate the patients’ cardiac failure status and to improve their prognosis. In providing home-visit treatment to elderly patients, we frequently find that these individuals suffer major cardiovascular diseases as a complication. Measurement of brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) levels is an effective means to examine and assess their cardiovascular risks. We divided these elderly chronic cardiac failure patients receiving home-visit treatments who showed high BNP levels into the beta-blocker administration group (n=16) and the non-administration group (n=17), and compared their BNP levels and major cardiovascular events. The results revealed that the subjects in the beta-blocker administration group had a significantly reduced BNP level (p < 0.01) and showed positive cardiovascular event suppression effects (log-rank test: p=0.0007). Further studies are deemed necessary by accumulating more patient cases.