Is heart rate reduction more important than target dose in chronic heart failure therapy with a beta-blocker?

摘要

1 Introduction Beta-adrenoceptor blocking agents(beta-blockers)are now well established as cornerstone therapy in patients with systolic chronic heart failure(CHF).[1]Clinical data have overwhelmingly proven the beneficial effects of beta-blocker therapy in terms of improving patient prognosis,decreasing requirements for hospitalization,and postponing disease progression.[2-4]However,it remains unclear what the optimal efficacious and safe dose for an individual patient with CHF is,and whether this can simply be inferred from the target dose for each beta-blocking agent as used in the major clinical trials.