echocardiographic evaluation of the effects of a single bolus of erythropoietin on reducing ischemia-reperfusion injuries during coronary artery bypass graft surgery; a randomized, double-blind, placebo-control study

background: erythropoietin (epo) is known as a regulating hormone for the production of red blood cells, called erythropoiesis. some studies have shown that epo exerts some non-hematopoietic protective effects on ischemia-reperfusion injuries in myocytes. using echocardiography, we evaluated the effect of epo infusion on reducing ischemia-reperfusion injuries and improvement of the cardiac function shortly after coronary artery bypass graft surgery (cabg). methods: forty-three patients were recruited in this study and randomly divided into two groups: the epo group, receiving standard medication and cabg surgery plus epo (700 iu/kg), and the control group, receiving standard medication and cabg surgery plus normal saline (10 cc) as placebo. the cardiac function was assessed through echocardiography before as well as at 4 and 30 days after cabg. results: echocardiography indicated that the ejection fraction had no differences between the epo and control groups at 4 days (47.05±6.29 vs. 45.90±4.97; p=0.334) and 30 days after surgery (47.27±28 vs. 46.62±5.7; p=0.69). there were no differences between the epo and control groups in the wall motion score index at 4 (p=0.83) and 30 days after surgery (p=0.902). in the epo group, there was a reduction in left ventricular end-systolic and end-diastolic diameters (lvesd and lvedd, respectively), as compared to the control group. conclusion: our results indicated that perioperative exogenous epo infusion could not improve the ventricular function and wall motion index in the immediate post-cabg weeks. nevertheless, a reduction in lvedd and lvesd at 4 days and 30 days after cabg in the epo group, by comparison with the control group, suggested that epo correlated with a reduction in the remodeling of myocytes and reperfusion injuries early after cabg. trial registration number: 138809102799n1