Abstract 2791: Silent Brain Infarction Predicts Cardiovascular Events And Mortality In Long-term Hemodialysis Patients

Abstract

Background: The cardiovascular (CV) events and mortality are significantly higher in hemodialysis (HD) patents compared to the general population. Although it is of clinical concern to predict the occurrence of CV events in long-term HD patients, more powerful predictor has under exploration. We investigated as to whether silent brain infarction (SBI) would be a predictable factor for future CV events and mortality in a large cohort of patients with long-term HD patients. Methods: After cranial magnetic resonance imaging to detect SBI, 202 long-term HD patients (7.1 ± 5.9 years) without symptomatic stroke were prospectively followed up until the incident of CV events (stroke, cardiac events, and death). We analyzed the prognostic role of SBI in CV events with the Kaplan-Meier method and Cox proportional hazards analysis. Results: The prevalence of SBI was quite higher compared to the previous reports (71.8% in all the patients). In overall patients, 60 patients suffered from CV disease (31 for coronary artery disease, 7 for congestive heart failure, 14 for symptomatic stroke) and 29 patients died (16 for CV death) during a follow up period (mean= 23 ± 13 months). In subgroup analysis regarding the presence of SBI, CV event-free survival rate for 4 years was significantly lower in the patients with SBI compared to those without SBI (54.6% vs. 86.7%, p=0.0003). CV and overall mortality were also significantly higher in SBI patients compared with No-SBI patients (CV mortality; 20.5 % vs. 4.3 %, overall mortality; 29.0% vs. 9.1% p< 0.01, respectively). Cox proportional hazards models showed that the presence of SBI was a significant predictor of cerebrovascular and CV events and CV and overall mortality even after adjustment for other CV risk factors listed on the Table . Conclusion: SBI detected with MRI would be powerful predictor of CV events and mortality in long-term HD patients. Hazard ratio (HR) of SBI for future events and mortality