ArticlesWasting as independent risk factor for mortality in chronic heart failure
Introduction
The treatment of patients with endstage chronic heart failure (CHF) is difficult. The two primary goals of treatment are to increase the duration and quality of life. One secondary goal is to achieve the optimum outcome at the lowest cost to society.1 Currently, the main therapeutic options are drug treatment and active haemodynamic support, with technical devices or by heart transplantation. A rational approach requires the identification of prognostic markers that can accurately define groups of patients at high risk.
During the past decade, several indicators of functional clinical status and exercise criteria,2, 3, 4, 5, 6 haemodynamic function,7, 8, 9 humoral and neurohormonal activation,7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and immunological status13, 14, 15 have been found to be more or less strongly and independently related to survival in CHF. Many patients with CHF develop a wasting syndrome, termed cardiac cachexia. These patients are generally perceived to be at higher risk than patients without the syndrome, but to date the prevalence and the mortality of this complication have not been reported. We have defined such patients prospectively and analysed mortality in relation to established pathophysiological predictors of survival. In particular we investigated whether the presence of wasting in CHF was an independent risk factor for poor prognosis, and what the additive prognostic value of other known risk factors would be in a group of patients with CHF.
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Patients and methods
Between June, 1993, and May, 1995, we studied 171 patients with CHF (154 men, 17 women), aged 27–86 years, in a heart-failure exercise laboratory. The diagnosis of CHF was based on a history of dyspnoea and symptomatic exercise intolerance with signs of pulmonary congestion or peripheral oedema, clinical examination, and usual investigations. 21 patients had CHF of New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class I, 63 class II, 68 class III, and 19 class IV. In all patients there was
Results
Of the 171 CHF patients who were followed up (mean 688 days [SD 317]), 49 (28·7%) died after 4 to 1202 days (mean 324 days [283]; median 222). The mean follow-up period of the 122 survivors was 834 days (SD 186; range 549–1269; median 778). The cumulative survival of all patients was 93·0% at 3 months, 87·1% at 6 months, 83·0% at 12 months, and 77·8% at 18 months. The primary endpoint was all-cause mortality, but no patient is known to have died of cancer or AIDS. All deaths could be attributed
Discussion
This study found that the wasting process in patients with CHF is a risk factor for poor prognosis. Cachexia provides information additional to and independent of other well-established indicators such as the clinical condition and exercise capacity. We suggest, therefore, that assessment of cachectic status should be included in decisions on heart transplantation and in other studies of survival in heart failure.
The prognostic importance of wasting is well established in other chronic
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