Acutely decompensated heart failure in a county emergency department: a double-blind randomized controlled comparison of nesiritide versus placebo treatment

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of BNP (Nesiritide), published as a randomized controlled trial.

Acutely decompensated congestive heart failure is a major cause of emergency department (ED) visits in county hospitals.

This often underserved population has a high rate of return visits to the ED for heart failure.

The researchers examined the effect of an 8-hour infusion of nesiritide on the composite of return to the ED or hospitalization at 30 days.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got BNP (Nesiritide) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on BNP (Nesiritide), so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the BNP (Nesiritide) group a baseline to be compared against.

A prospective, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial of nesiritide plus protocol-specified standard therapy versus standard therapy done in the ED for acutely decompensated congestive heart failure.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Emergency Service, Hospital, Heart Failure, Hypertension, Natriuretic Agents, Natriuretic Peptide, Brain and Recurrence.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of BNP (Nesiritide).

Results are reported in around 10 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2008 (Annals of emergency medicine), a journal based in United States.

More context: the BNP (Nesiritide) compound page, all human trials.