Acute cardiac care & resuscitation
Underrepresentation and exclusion of patients with cardiovascular disease in intensive care randomized controlled trials
Authors' conclusion
Those with comorbid CVD are both frequently excluded and underrepresented in intensive care RCTs, limiting the application of RCTs to this physiologically complex patient population.
Study context
- Population
- Prospective randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in the adult (age ≥18 years) intensive care setting with ≥50 individuals, published 2007 to 2019 in the five highest impact factor journals in critical care medicine, general internal medicine, and cardiovascular disease
- Participants
- 412 eligible RCTs
- Outcome
- Trials with specific CVD-related exclusion criteria
Pooled result
As reported in the abstract
RCTs with specific cardiovascular disease (CVD)-related exclusion criteria
132
32.0%
Exclusion for history of heart failure
29.5%
Exclusion for history of ischaemic heart disease
26.5%
Further pooled results
Representation of CVD (reporting of any CVD history)
- RCTs reporting any CVD history
- 150 (36.4%)
- Prevalence of any CVD, of those reporting
- 15.7%
- Prevalence of ischaemic heart disease, of those reporting
- 13.2%
- Prevalence of heart failure, of those reporting
- 10.2%
Original publication
Underrepresentation and exclusion of patients with cardiovascular disease in intensive care randomized controlled trials. Eur Heart J Acute Cardiovasc Care. Published 14 February 2025. doi:10.
Summarised from the published abstract; every number is checked against it