YiQiFuMai injection for chronic heart failure: Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Chronic heart AQ4 failure (CHF) is the final stage of various heart diseases. YiQiFuMai injection (YQFMI) has been widely applied in the treatment of CHF. However, to our knowledge, there has been no systematic review or meta-analysis of randomized controlled trails (RCTs) regarding the effectiveness of this treatment. Here, we provide a protocol to evaluate the efficacy and safety of YQFMI for CHF. METHODS: To evaluate the clinical efficacy of YQFMI in treating CHF, 2 researcher members will independently search the RCTs in the following 8 Chinese and English databases, in which the data collection will be from the time when the respective databases were established to January 2018. The databases will include MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane CENTRAL, CINAHL, the Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, the China National Knowledge Infrastructure, VIP Information and Wanfang Data. The therapeutic effects according to the mortality and the New York Heart Association (NYHA) function classification will be accepted as the primary outcomes. We will use RevMan V.5.3 software as well to compute the data synthesis carefully when a meta-analysis is allowed. RESULTS: This study will provide a high-quality synthesis of current evidence of YQFMI for CHF from several aspects including mortality, NYHA function classification. CONCLUSION: The conclusion of our systematic review will provide evidence to judge whether YQFMI is an effective intervention for CHF. PROSPERO registration number: PROSPERO CRD42017079696.