The effect of angiotensin II on blood pressure in patients with circulatory shock: a structured review of the literature.

What It Covers

Researchers studied Angiotensin II in the context of low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension in this review publication.

Circulatory shock is a common syndrome with a high mortality and limited therapeutic options.

Despite its discovery and use in clinical and experimental settings more than a half-century ago, angiotensin II (Ang II) has only been recently evaluated as a vasopressor in distributive shock.

Who the Included Studies Covered

The researchers searched PubMed, MEDLINE, Ovid, and Embase to identify all English literature accounts of intravenous Ang II in humans for the treatment of shock (systolic blood pressure [SBP] ≤ 90 mmHg or a mean arterial pressure [MAP] ≤ 65 mmHg), and hand-searched the references of extracted papers for further studies meeting inclusion criteria.

Of 3743 articles identified, 24 studies including 353 patients met inclusion criteria.

How the Review Was Done

Complete data existed for 276 patients.

BP effects were grouped according to type of shock, with additional analyses completed for patients with absent blood pressure.

Shock was distributive (n = 225), cardiogenic (n = 38), or from other causes (n = 90).

Blood pressure as absent in 18 patients.

What Was Measured

Despite its discovery and use in clinical and experimental settings more than a half-century ago, angiotensin II (Ang II) has only been recently evaluated as a vasopressor in distributive shock.

The subject headings attached to it are Angiotensin II, Blood Pressure, Monitoring, Physiologic and Shock.

Author keywords: Cardiac arrest, Cardiogenic shock, Distributive shock, Vasoconstrictor and Vasopressor.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a review of Angiotensin II in people with low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension.

Its findings take up roughly 8 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2017 (Critical care (London, England)), a journal based in England.

More context: the Angiotensin II compound page, Low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension research.