Digestery
Lifestyle practices › Sauna and the Heart › Studies

Pooled review (meta-analysis)

Pooled review of 16 studies: heat therapy raised heart pumping in heart failure

Ye and colleagues · Artificial organs · 2020

Original title: Can heat therapy help patients with heart failure?

Under review. A person has not yet checked this summary against the paper. It is written from the PubMed abstract. Until a person checks it, search engines are asked not to list this page.

What the study found

Points to benefit

Sixteen studies on 506 patients showed LVEF up 4.4%. Blood pressure fell in 431 patients of 15 studies. Among 65 patients, thermal therapy reduced cardiac death and rehospitalization by 31.3%.

The study at a glance

Type of study
Pooled review (meta-analysis)
Who or what was studied
people with heart failure
What was tested
Thermal therapy that raises body temperature by up to 1.4°C, vs no therapy
What it measured
Several kinds of outcomes
Who has a stake
No disclosure in PubMed
No disclosure in PubMed; funders include a heart institute and public research councils.
Journal
Artificial organs, 2020
Source
PubMed record 32017138. This page is based on the abstract only.

How much this study counts

  • ✓Pools the results of many studies.
  • •A pooled review is only as strong as the studies it pools.
  • •Measured several kinds of outcomes.
  • •The PubMed record has no conflict-of-interest statement.
  • •Summarized from the PubMed abstract only. The full paper may hold details the abstract leaves out.

✓ Strength– Limit• Note

These points come from fixed rules about the type of study, its size and length, what it measured, and who has a stake. Every study on Digestery gets the same rules.

Where this study sits

This paper is not on the ladder. It is a pooled review (meta-analysis), and reviews and opinion pieces discuss studies that are already counted on the steps below.

↑ Stronger evidence

  1. Trials in people: heart disease, blood pressure and death

    3

    3 benefit

  2. Trials in people: other measures

    2

    1 benefit, 1 no difference

  3. Trials in people: lab tests or safety

    5

    2 benefit, 1 mixed, 2 no difference

  4. Population studies

    4

    4 benefit

  5. Blood levels and genes

    0

    None among the papers we read.

↓ Weaker evidence

  • Points to benefit
  • Mixed
  • No difference
  • No direction
  • Points to harm

How it fits with the other research

The short answer to “Does sauna use lower heart disease risk?”

Possibly, but not proven in trials.

Confidence: low. Based on 21 on-topic papers.

Read the full answer
  • Part of the finding “One small study tracked heart failure events”.
  • Summed up in “What reviews found”: Pooled heat therapy studies in heart failure: sixteen studies on 506 patients showed pumping (LVEF) up 4.4%, and blood pressure fell in 431 patients of 15 studies. The authors called mild heat an effective add-on therapy.
  • Open item for a person: Ye 2020 reports 31.3% fewer heart deaths and rehospitalizations in 65 patients; this may be Kihara 2009's data. Check before counting separately.
  • Open item for a person: Pizzey 2021 and Ye 2020 pool heat therapy generally; abstracts do not say how many studies used sauna.

Other reviews on this question

See all 21 studies on this question

How this page was made

Label

First read of the abstract
Claude Sonnet
Independent second read
Claude Haiku
Differences settled
The two reads agreed on every checked field. Claude Opus 5.5.
Headline
Claude Sonnet, from the checked study record. A script checked its numbers and wording.
Numbers
Checked against the abstract by a script
“How much this study counts”
Fixed rules, the same for every study
Source check by a person
Not yet. Required before search engines may list this page.

Spot an error? Email a flag with a link to your source, or use the form on the question page.