Relationship Between Different Nutritional Scores in Elderly Patients with Acute Decompensated Heart Failure in the Coronary Intensive Care Unit

Abstract

Introduction: The relationship between heart failure and malnutrition is significant. The most commonly used nutritional indices are theprognostic nutritional index, controlling nutritional status, and albumin–bilirubin grade. We aimed to investigate the clinical impact of nutritional status in elderly acute decompensated heart failure patients and the relationship between the prognostic nutritional index, controlling nutritional status, and albumin–bilirubin grade nutritional indices to detect 12-month and 3-month rehospitalization rates, mortality, and length of stay in the Coronary Intensive Care Unit. Our study is the first to evaluate the controlling nutritional status and albumin–bilirubin grade in our study cohort in Turkey. Materials and Methods: The medical records of 1162 patients hospitalized in the Coronary Intensive Care Unit were evaluated retrospectively. A total of 123 patients were included. Results: We found a statistically significant difference between the prognostic nutritional index, albumin–bilirubin grade and controlling nutritional status scores and mortality. However, the most statistically significant relationship was found in the prognostic nutritional index score. We found that as the nutritional scores worsened, the length of hospital stay was prolonged. The albumin–bilirubin grade score in the short term and controlling nutritional status score in the long term were not statistically significant to show rehospitalization. Conclusion: Prognostic nutritional index is an independent predictor of mortality, short- and long-term rehospitalizations, and length of stay in elderly patients with acute decompensated heartfailure. Its predictive power was better than the albumin–bilirubin grade and controlling nutritional status scores evaluated in our study. Keywords: Heart Failure; Malnutrition; Aged; Coronary Care Unit; Nutritional Status.