Research Article Clinical Effect of Shenfu Injection in Patients with Septic Shock: A Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review

Copyright © 2015 Zijun Mou et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Purpose. To conduct a meta-analysis evaluating the efficacy of Shenfu injection for treating patients with septic shock when comparedwith conventional therapy.Methods. Eight databases including Pubmed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, ISIWeb of Science, CNKI, Wanfang, VIP, and CBM were searched up to October 2014. Randomized controlled trials assessing the efficacy of Shenfu injection were identified.Mean arterial pressure, heart rate, lactate, andmortality were included as outcomemeasurements. Results. We analyzed data from 12 randomized controlled trials involving 904 participants. Compared with conventional therapy, Shenfu injection could further increase the mean arterial pressure at 1 hour (SMD 0.38; 95 % CI, 0.01–0.74) and 6 hours (SMD 0.82; 95% CI, 0.03–1.61). Shenfu injection could further normalize heart rate at 6 hours (SMD −0.90; 95 % CI, −1.47–0.33) and clear serum lactate at 6 hours (SMD −0.51; 95%CI, −0.70–0.32) and 24 hours (SMD, 0.52; 95%CI, −0.77–0.26). As the endpoint of mortality was not unified, it was not meta-analyzed. Conclusions. Based on the findings in present review, Shenfu injection is more effective than conventional therapy in increasing mean arterial pressure, normalizing heart rate, clearing serum lactate, and reducing mortality. These results should be confirmed in higher level clinical trials in the future. 1