RESUMO
PURPOSE: To evaluate the effect on symptoms, exercise capacity (stress test) and myocardial response (Echo, and Holter) of ibopamine or captopril in patients with congestive heart failure. METHODS: Double-blind, parallel randomized study of 18 patients, 9 in each group, studied during three months at the outpatient clinic. Twelve were male, 6 female, all in heart failure functional class II or III. The age ranged from 27 to 67 year-old (mean 48.7 years). The patients received captopril 50 mg tid or ibopamine 100 mg tid. RESULTS: The patients presented clinical improvement in both groups. At the stress test there was an increase of exercise time from 9 to 17 minutes and from 12 to 16 minutes with captopril and ibopamine respectively. The Echo study showed respectively to captopril and ibopamine groups a left ventricular and diastolic diameter increase from 72 to 74 and from 74 to 75mm and a increase from 0.35 to 0.38 and from 0.35 to 0.39 of the left ventricular ejection fraction. The incidence of ventricular arrhythmias was similar in both groups. CONCLUSION: These data show that ibopamine improved cardiac function, increasing the cardiac output, ejection fraction and exercise time and did not increase the incidence of arrhythmias. This effect is similar to that observed with captopril.