OBJECTIVETo investigate drug treatment of inpatients with chronic heart failure(CHF) during the past 30 years in some areas and to provide more information on the treatment strategy of CHF.

METHODSIn two centers a retrospective study was conducted. All data were taken from the hospitalized cases with chronic heart failure. The medication distributions in different decade, gender, age heart function grade and etiology were analyzed.

RESULTS5189 cases were enrolled with the ratio of male to female as 1:1.02. The mean age was (62.93 +/- 13.49) years old. The general causes of chronic heart failure were as follows: coronary heart disease (44.2%), rheumatic heart disease (24.1% ) , pulmonary heart disease (19.0%) and cardiomyopathy (4.8%). The admission cardiac function was mostly seen as grade NYHA IlI and IV, and their proportions were 40.6% and 44.5%. Major medication would include nitride (80.0%), diuretics (71.8% ), digitalis (68.1% ), angiotensin conversion enzyme inhibitors (ACEI) (52.2% ) and beta-blockers (19.5% ) etc. Moreover the frequency of above used medication was essentially increasing decade by decade. The major drug treatment of pulmonary heart disease also included diuretics, nitride, digitalis. ACEI was more commonly used in male than in female cases. The frequency of ACEI and ARB were more commonly used in the group > or = 60 years old than that in the group < 60 years old. The administration frequency of beta- blockers had no significant difference among different age and sexes.

CONCLUSIONThe conventional drugs such as nitride, diuretics, digitalis were still dominated the treatment of CHF. Although the administration frequency of ACEI and beta-blockers increased quickly, there had been a great gap between the optimal medical strategy and clinical practice in the management of CHF. Data showed the treatment strategy was changing.