Objective To design Chinese Medical Symptom Rating Sc ale for Heart Fail ure（CMSRS-HF） and observe its clinical applicability.Methods CMSRS-HF was desi gned according to standardized procedures.Totally 79 heart failure patients rec ruited from 3 clinical centers were investigated with CMSRS-HF.The Cronbach’s α and split-half reliability was used to study its reliability.The validity w as investigated by comparing CMSRS-HF with the Chinese version of Minnesota Liv ing with Heart Failure Questionnaire（MLHFQ）.The patients were randomized into 3 groups with the New Yor k Heart Association（NYHA） Functional Classification.The judging validity and r esponsiveness was investigated with analysis of variance

student’s t test

effe ct size（ES） and standardized response mean（SRM）.Results A 16-item scale was d esigned as CMSRS-HF.The Cronbach’s α and split-half reliability was 0.84 an d 0. 80 respectively.The correlation coefficient between CMSRS-HF and MLHFQ was 0. 5 1

0.43 and 0.54 in physiology

emotion and total score respectively

with a m od erate positive correlation（P<0.001）.The integral differences were statis ticall y significant between different classifications of NYHA according to CMSRS-HF（ P <0.001）.The integral was decreased significantly after intervention by Chines e medicine for two weeks（P<0.001）.The ES and SRM was 1.12 and 1.29 respect ively.Con clusion CMSRS-HF is reliable

valid and responsive to evaluate the the rapeutic effect of Chinese medicine for heart failure.