OBJECTIVES

: The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of bone marrow-derived cells (BMC) technology in patients with heart failure and compare it with alternative therapies.

METHODS

: A systematic review study was conducted to identify all clinical studies published by 2016. Accordingly, using keywords such as “Heart Failure, Stem Cell, Bone Marrow Cell, Drug Therapy, Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy, Intra-aortic balloon pump, Pacemakers” and combinations of the mentioned words, we searched electronic databases including Scopus, Cochrane Library, PubMed, and Web of Science. The quality of the selected studies was assessed using the Jadad score and the Newcastle-Ottawa. we conducted a systematic comparison between the treatment approaches using a network meta-analysis method.

RESULTS

: This network meta-analysis covered a total of 63 final studies and 7194 patients. Comparing the effectiveness of BMC method with that of CRT, Drug, Pacemaker, and IABP methods in terms of the effectiveness indices of LVEF, LVES, and LVED, we observed significant differences in some cases (p <0.05) and non-significant differences in other cases (p >0.05); thus, our findings about the effectiveness of the methods were not similar. However, given the effectiveness index of failures cases, which includes patients’ mortality and is considered as a final indicator, the BMC method was superior to the other methods and had a significant difference with them (p <0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

: The results of this study showed that the BMC method in general, and especially in terms of failure cases index, had a higher level of clinical effectiveness. Therefore, it can be considered as an appropriate alternative to the existing therapies in the studied field. Of course, this conclusion is only in terms of clinical effectiveness. For making a better decision, when comparing this method with other methods, it is suggested that the two dimensions of cost and effectiveness should be assessed simultaneously.