Abstract
Abstract Background Prognosis of patients with acute heart failure (AHF) and different etiologies remains a challenging issue for the Cardiologist. Purpose We aimed to evaluate clinical and echocardiographic indexes and blood tests values of patients admitted to Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for AHF to test their capability to predict events at short-, medium- and long-term follow-up. Methods We retrospectively enrolled 830 patients who entered the ICU of our third-level hospital between 2010 and 2013 for AHF. Exclusion criteria included: active malignances, heart transplantation, patients with left ventricular assist device. We evaluated in each subject: cause of admission, medical history, chest congestion severity at admission, blood tests, echocardiographic parameters and administered drugs during in-hospital stay. Primary endpoints included: mortality rate at 30 days, 6 months and 5 years after dismission, days of ICU stay and cardiology ward stay. Indexes with statistical significance at univariate analysis, were then tested by multivariate analysis. Results The study population (average age 72.2±13 y) had an ejection fraction (EF) 36±12% at ICU admission. Best predictors of prognosis in the populations, after multivariate analysis, resulted to be: renal failure, EF, age, mitral regurgitation (MR) more than mild, use of non-invasive ventilation support during ICU stay, previous stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA). With these indexes, we created a multi-parametric prognostic score composed by: 0.7*[age >76 years] + 1.4*[plasmatic creatinine >2mg/dl] + 0.8*[non-invasive mechanical ventilation] + 0.9*[previous stroke/TIA] + 0.8*[EF <30%] + + 0.7*[previous hospitalization for AHF] + 0.5*[moderate/severe MR]. According to the score, we stratified the population in 3 tertiles with increasing mortality risk: low if <1.5, medium if 1.5–3, high risk if >3 (Figure 1). At ROC curve analysis, the score showed a greater prognostic accuracy than each parameter (30 days AUC 0.75, 6 months AUC 0.78, 5 years AUC 0.79). Figure 1 Conclusions A combined clinical, humoral and echocardiographic score could represent a new tool in the prognostication of patients with AHF since the admission in ICU.
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