ACUPUNCTURE FOR CORONARY HEART DISEASE WITH DEPRESSION:STUDY PROTOCOL FOR A RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL

Objective: Coronary heart disease(CHD) is a chronic condition, which seriously affects the daily lives of patients.In the course of CHD, depression can adversely affect the patient’s heart condition.Mitigating the depressive state in patients has great benefit to improve the patients’ condition of CHD.Acupuncture can relieve depression as well as medicines.However, its effect for CHD with depression is inconclusive.Aim of this study is to evaluate acupuncture for CHD patients with depression in China.Methods: The study is a prospective randomized controlled trial comparing the effects of acupuncture with placebo needle.Patients are manual-based, follow clinical epidemiology and acupuncture clinical practice criterion, and share evidence-based medicine.Patients will be randomly assigned to the acupuncture group and the placebo needle group, and acupuncture doctors with clinical practice experience will carry out the intervention.Data will be collected at baseline and 4, 8, 12, and 16 weeks after intervention.The evaluation indicators are Seattle angina questionnaire for patients’ changes in the quality of life and Zung’s self-evaluating depression scale for their mental changes.The recruitment will be completed in September 2014.Discussion: We expect that patients’ depression condition after acupuncture will be mitigated significantly compared with the placebo needle group, and the quality of life of patients after acupuncture will be improved significantly than the placebo needle group.We estimate that the acupuncture has a benefit effect to mitigate the depression state of CHD patients, and to improve the quality of their life.The study will provide a new non-drug therapy for CHD with depression, by improving the patient’s mental state to improve their quality of life.