Benefit of low-salt diet for heart failure uncertain
Cardiologist 'incredulous' at lack of evidence for 'bedrock recommendation'
8th November 2018
Although many doctors advise heart failure patients to follow a low-salt diet to help minimise complications, a new study shows high quality evidence is lacking to support this recommendation.
Dr Kamal Mahtani (PhD) and colleagues performed a systematic review of all the randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of reduced-salt diets for heart failure that they could find in a literature search. They found nine RCTs involving a total of 479 patients. All studies had fewer than 100 patients.
"We found no clinically relevant data on whether