Noninvasive ventilation improves cardiac function in patients with chronic heart failure

Chronic heart failure (CHF) has been shown to be associated with an increased incidence of sleep-disordered breathing. Whether treatment with noninvasivepositive-pressure ventilation (NPPV), including continuous positive airway pressure, bi-level positive airway pressure and adaptive servo-ventilation, improves clinical outcomes of CHF patients is still debated. 2,832 CHF patients were enrolled in our analysis. NPPV was significantly associated with improvement in left ventricular ejection fraction (39.39% vs. 34.24%; WMD, 5.06; 95% CI, 3.30-6.81; P < 0.00001) and plasma brain natriuretic peptide level (268.23 pg/ml vs. 455.55 pg/ml; WMD, −105.66; 95% CI, [−169.19]-[−42.13]; P = 0.001). However, NPPV did not reduce all-cause mortality (0.26% vs. 0.24%; OR, 1.13; 95% CI, 0.93-1.37; P = 0.22) or re-hospitalization rate (57.86% vs. 59.38%; OR, 0.47; 95% CI, 0.19-1.19; P = 0.02) as compared with conventional therapy. Despite no benefits on hard endpoints, NPPV may improve cardiac function of CHF patients. These data highlight the important role of NPPV in the therapy of CHF.