Sublingual administration of captopril in patients with acute myocardial ischemia.

Summary: To investigate the anti-ischemic capability of the angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor captopril, 10 patients with acute myocardial ischemia (angina pectoris >1 h, ST-segment depression ±0.1 mV, no rise in creatine phosphokinase) received 25 mg captopril sublingually after being treated with an intravenous infusion of nitroglycerin (3 mg/h) and heparin (1200 IU/h) for 1 hour. A control group of 10 patients received placebo instead of captopril. Results showed a decrease of the initial ST-segment depression from 0.25±0.04 to 0.2±0.03 mV (p>0.01) with nitroglycerin for the captopril group and from 0.26±0.05 to 0.21±0.05 mV (p>0.01) for the control group. An additional decrease to…