Efficacy of cilostazol on uncontrolled coronary vasospastic angina: a pilot study
Cardiovascular Therapeutics, 04/24/2012

Yoo SY et al. – Cilostazol appears to be an effective therapy in VSA uncontrolled with conventional medical treatment. A further prospective, randomized, placebo–controlled study will be needed to validate this result.

• This study was conducted in a prospective, multicenter, non–randomized manner.
• The subject consisted of 21 patients (13 men, 57 ± 9 year–old) who were diagnosed with VSA and had at least two angina attacks during the past one week despite of conventional medications such as calcium channel blockers and/or nitrates.
• They took Cilostazol 100 mg twice daily for two weeks in addition to the conventional medications.
• The patients recorded the frequency of angina attack and wrote down the numeric rating scale of a ‘severity of angina attack’ while taking conventional medications and Cilostazol for two weeks, and also recorded an averaged scale or total number of event during the last week at the time of the assessment.
• Using the Wilcoxon rank–sum test, authors compared the changes in the scores of frequency and severity of angina attack before and after adding Cilostazol to the conventional medications.

• After adding Cilostazol to the conventional medications, there were 78.9% relative reduction of the score of angina intensity and 73.5% of angina frequency (p < 0.001).
• There were four patients (19%) who were forced to stop Cilostazol due to headache as an adverse event.