β-blockers and risk of all-cause mortality in patients with chronic heart failure and atrial fibrillation—a meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Effects of β-blockers on outcomes in patients with chronic heart failure (CHF) and atrial fibrillation (AF) is still in controversy. METHODS: Searching was conducted by using keywords “atrial fibrillation”, and “heart failure” in PubMed, MEDLINE and Embase databases before November 30, 2017. Prospective studies [i.e. randomized control trials (RCTs), post-hoc analysis of RCTs, prospective cohort studies and registry studies] that studied the effect of β-blockers and all-cause mortality in patients with CHF and AF were included. The analysis was stratified by study design. RESULTS: We identified 12 studies, including 6 post-hoc analysis of RCTs and 6 observational studies (including prospective registry studies and prospective cohort studies), which enrolled 38,133 patients with CHF and AF. Overall, β-blockers treatment was associated with significant decrease in all-cause mortality [Risk Ratio (RR) =0.73; 95% Confidence Interval (CI) 0.65–0.82, P < 0.001]. When stratified by study design, β-blockers treatment was associated with 34% reduction in patients with CHF and AF in observational study (RR = 0.66; 95% CI 0.58–0.76, P < 0. 001), but not in post-hoc analysis of RCT (RR = 0.87; 95% CI 0.74–1.02, P = 0.09). CONCLUSIONS: β-blockers treatment was associated with significantly decrease the risk of all-cause mortality in patients with AF-CHF and it was only seen in observational study group, but not in subgroup analysis of RCT group. Further large RCTs are required to verify the effect of β-blockers treatment on patients with CHF and AF. The main limitation of this study is the lack of individual data on patients in each study. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12872-019-1079-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.