Assessment of dyspnea in acute decompensated heart failure: insights from ASCEND-HF (Acute Study of Clinical Effectiveness of Nesiritide in Decompensated Heart Failure) on the contributions of peak expiratory flow

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at BNP (Nesiritide).

Dyspnea is a key symptom and clinical trial endpoint in AHF, yet objective assessment is lacking.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 421 patients taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

In a clinical trial substudy, 421 patients (37 sites) underwent PEFR testing at baseline, 1, 6, and 24 h after randomization to nesiritide or placebo.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized and placebo-controlled study.

The patients were allocated by chance, so the BNP (Nesiritide) group and the comparison group should start out alike.

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

DI (by Likert scale) was collected at hours 6 and 24.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Acute Disease, Disease Progression, Dyspnea, Heart Failure, Natriuretic Agents, Natriuretic Peptide, Brain and Peak Expiratory Flow Rate.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of BNP (Nesiritide) in 421 patients.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Its findings take up roughly 7 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2012 (Journal of the American College of Cardiology), a journal based in United States.

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